HPCwire: TABB Group Defines Hardware Acceleration

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June 16, 2009

TABB Group Defines Hardware Acceleration

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Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), graphical processing units (GPUs) and multicore processors showcase the three hardware types used for acceleration

NEW YORK and LONDON, June 16 -- According to TABB Group's new IT-centric research published today, "Hardware Acceleration: Traders and Teraflops," hardware acceleration is the hybrid car of trading systems. "Choosing financial-services hardware today often feels like having to choose between driving a Corvette or driving a Prius," says Kevin McPartland, senior analyst at TABB and author of the report. For most financial firms, however, the right hardware is just as much about efficiency as it is about speed. Horsepower is still critical as data volumes increase and acceptable latency declines, but, he adds, "crunching numbers efficiently brings with it many more benefits than just keeping up with the Goldmans."

By offloading certain tasks to specialty chips or optimizing code to run in parallel on multiple cores, the endgame can be reached more quickly, less expensively and by using less power, in some cases, in a much smaller footprint. "In today's economic environment, what CTO can argue with something that improves performance and lowers costs?" he asks.

Although raw compute power remains critical on Wall Street, it is smart power that will take things forward. Defined by TABB Group, hardware acceleration is writing optimized code for the hardware architecture most suitable for a given problem. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), graphical processing units (GPUs) and multicore processors showcase the three hardware types used for acceleration gaining the most traction by financial services firms: programmable chips, many-core processors and multicore processors.

Until recently, financial firms' IT departments ensured that their messaging and analytical needs were being met by employing a horizontal-scaling model. "They threw more hardware at the problem as the need for more capacity increased," McPartland says. Although commodity hardware is still relatively inexpensive, he claims that the industry has reached a technological crossroads. "Software cannot be optimized any more than it has been already, nor can the amount of available datacenter space, power, cooling and money keep pace with major financial services firms' demand for more and more compute power."

Technological innovation comes from two places -- demand and technology for technology's sake. There is no lack of either on Wall Street, says McPartland. "Traders will always want to get things done faster and technologists will never stop loving technology. As hardware-acceleration technology becomes less expensive and the return on investment becomes more obvious, the combination of demand and innovation will result in unimaginable advancements. The question is not whether we can get faster, but how and when?"

Based on in-depth conversations with financial markets participants at major trading firms, execution venues and vendors, the 20-page TABB report defines hardware acceleration beyond specialty chips, outlines key considerations for selecting the approach most appropriate for a given project and lays out the future of hardware acceleration for financial firms.

The Hardware Acceleration report can be accessed by TABB Group Research Alliance clients and pre-qualified media at https://www.tabbgroup.com/Login.aspx. For an executive summary or to purchase the report, visit http://www.tabbgroup.com, or write to info@tabbgroup.com.

Other recent related research publications from TABB Group include: Financial Services Data Centers: Power, Proximity and Profit; The Value of a Millisecond: Finding the Optimal Speed of a Trading Infrastructure; Single-Points-of-Failures are One Thing: Minimizing Their Impact is Everything; and If Location Is Everything, What About Co-Location?

About TABB Group

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