About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Intel, Ion Provide SSD Boost to kdb+

Subscribe to our newsletter

A just published STAC report sponsored by Intel provides insight into performance benchmarks for Kx Systems’ kdb+ database running against an Ion Computer Systems storage appliance containing solid state disk (SSD) technology from Intel.

According to the report, several tests that form part of STAC’s M3 benchmark suite – focused on the performance of historical tick databases – showed performance boosts compared to traditional ‘spindle’ disk storage.  Specifically, results were between 2.2x and 2.7x that of spindle technology, with Ion’s Storion SR-71 appliance taking up just 2U of rack space and drawing less than 500 watts of power.

The ‘stack under test’ used to perform the benchmarks consisted of:

– Kx Systems kdb+ 2.8
– Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 with ext4
– Ion Storion SR-71 appliance, equipped with Intel 320 SSD Storage Systems
– IBM x3850 X5 Server with 4 * 10-core Intel  E7-4870 chips, at 2.4 GHs, and 512 GB RAM
– Intel 520 x10gE adaptors, and a Netgear XSM7224S switch, linking the IBM server to the Ion storage appliance.  A total of 4 adaptors in the server linked to 4 in the SR-71.

Ion’s SR-71 provides up to 10 GB of usable storage, with 600,000 input/output operations per second.  Storage can be increased by connecting multiple SR-71s.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: From Monolith to Modular: Architecting Equity Trading Platforms for 24/5 and Beyond

Date: 14 October 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes Equities markets are entering a more distributed, always-on phase. Liquidity is fragmenting across venues and geographies, trading hours are extending toward 24/5 and beyond, and market data volumes, investor expectations and competitive pressure are all rising at once. Many...

BLOG

Build, Buy, or Both? Why the Real Question for Quant Infrastructure Has Shifted to Where the Edge Sits

The questions have become perennial: build versus buy, cloud versus on-premise, in-house versus managed platform. But the discussion that emerged from a recent A-Team Group webinar on quantitative research infrastructure pointed to something more interesting than a binary choice. The build-versus-buy question, panellists agreed, has matured into a more sophisticated conversation about where firms locate...

EVENT

ExchangeTech Summit London

A-Team Group, organisers of the TradingTech Summits, are pleased to announce the inaugural ExchangeTech Summit London on May 14th 2026. This dedicated forum brings together operators of exchanges, alternative execution venues and digital asset platforms with the ecosystem of vendors driving the future of matching engines, surveillance and market access.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2026

AI adoption in capital markets has moved into a more disciplined phase. The priority is now controlled deployment: where AI can be used safely, where it can deliver measurable value, and how outputs can be governed, monitored and evidenced. The 2026 edition of the AI in Capital Markets Handbook examines how AI is being applied...