"“The Ultimate Trading Machine” from Penguin Computing sets Record for Low Latency"

From Inside HPC, Nov. 1 (I know, that's a lot of latency):

The world of High Frequency Trading is all about reducing latency to make money. At the recent STAC Summit in Chicago, a Penguin Computing device called The Ultimate Trading Machine achieved a record-low 98 nanosecond tick-to-trade latency, some 18% faster than the previous world record.

“The time interval between receiving a market tick and sending a buy or sell order is the tick-to-trade latency. Decreasing the tick-to-trade latency improves the queue positions of trades. This results in higher probabilities for trades to be executed, and, thus, delivers a competitive advantage.”

The Ultimate Trading Machine was evaluated using the STAC-T0 benchmark suite. This benchmark simulates the time for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to emit a trade data packet and for the Exchange to receive a market order packet. This is the minimum, possible trade execution time. STAC-T0 is designed to isolate the tick-to-trade network I/O latency and to measure this latency with high precision (an uncertainty of just ±2 nanoseconds is incorporated into reported results).

The solution achieves ultra low processing latencies through optimal design choices and select components. It is built on a solid performer, the Penguin Computing Relion XE1112 server. This 1U, 19″ EIA form-factor server features dual Intel Xeon Scalable processors and optimized memory, bus, and storage options (including low-latency, Intel Optane data center storage). The interconnect is powered by the Solarflare XtremeScale 8722 software-defined network interface, delivering ultra-low latency and onload kernel bypass with offload to a Xilinx Kintex UltraScale FPGA running the LDA Technologies’ Lightspeed TCP core software stack....MORE