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: Agility as Alpha: How Trading Infrastructure Determines Who Wins in Volatile Markets

Date: 21 May 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes Tariff shocks, geopolitical realignment and macroeconomic regime shifts are redrawing the investment landscape faster than most firms’ technology stacks can keep up. For hedge funds and asset managers, the ability to move quickly into new asset classes, geographies or...

BLOG

Sphinx Targets 24/7 Energy Markets with Blockchain-Enabled Derivatives Exchange

A new entrant to the energy derivatives landscape is preparing to test whether modern trading infrastructure can reshape how energy risk is managed. Sphinx, a startup exchange operator, is developing a platform designed for continuous trading and near-instant settlement in energy derivatives, initially targeting U.S. natural gas and electricity markets. The Sphinx Global Commodity Exchange...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit London

Now in its 3rd year, the AI in Capital Markets Summit returns with a focus on the practicalities of onboarding AI enterprise wide for business value creation. Whilst AI offers huge potential to revolutionise capital markets operations many are struggling to move beyond pilot phase to generate substantial value from AI.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2022/2023 – Tenth Edition

Welcome to the tenth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a publication that has tracked new regulations, amendments, implementation and data management requirements as regulatory change has impacted global capital markets participants over the past 10 years. This edition of the handbook includes new regulations and highlights some of the major regulatory interventions challenging...