About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
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 Data to Alpha: AI Strategies for Taming Unstructured Data

Date: 16 April 2026 Time: 9:00am ET / 2:00pm London / 3:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes Unstructured data and text now accounts for the majority of information flowing through financial markets organisations, spanning research content, corporate disclosures, communications, alternative data, and internal documents. While AI has created new opportunities to extract signals, many firms are...

BLOG

FIX Trading Community Unveils Reforms to Boost European Markets

The FIX Trading Community has put forward a series of proposals aimed at enhancing the transparency and appeal of European capital markets. In a whitepaper titled “FIXing Europe – How the European Consolidated Tape can radically improve the image of European capital markets,” the industry association outlines four key reforms to address long-standing issues with...

EVENT

Eagle Alpha Alternative Data Conference, Spring, New York, hosted by A-Team Group

Now in its 8th year, the Eagle Alpha Alternative Data Conference managed by A-Team Group, is the premier content forum and networking event for investment firms and hedge funds.

GUIDE

ESG Data Handbook 2022

The ESG landscape is changing faster than anyone could have imagined even five years ago. With tens of trillions of dollars expected to have been committed to sustainable assets by the end of the decade, it’s never been more important for financial institutions of all sizes to stay abreast of changes in the ESG data...