Not too many traders have heard of Intilop, though its technology is probably widely deployed within the low-latency trading systems they rely on, especially in the areas of network processing. IntelligentTradingTechnology.com spoke to the company’s CEO/CTO Kelly Masood to find out the ‘inside’ story.
Q: Can you begin by introducing Intilop and what the company does?
A: Intilop is a premier developer of advanced networking mega IPs for systems, ASICs, FPGAs. We are also a silicon integrator and total solutions provider. Intilop’s key strength is in implementing break through concepts and innovative ideas in silicon.
The latest series of TCP Offload Engine (TOE) products are based around their patent pending TCP technology. We are also a developer/provider of high performance switches, deep packet content inspection engines, Ethernet MACs and other system-level mega IPs, which are key factors in our success. We hold patents with multiple claims in ‘Ultra-high Speed Search Technology’. Our customers are among the most respected worldwide financial institutions, and high performance networking system developers for stock trading, data centre equipment developers and high-end server/NIC developers.
Q: You have quite a number of different products. Can you provide an overview of the different types, and what applications they address?
A: In addition to a series of TCP and UDP Offload Engines and system solutions, Intilop offers a host of advanced networking IPs – e.g. multi-port scalable network switch IP and solutions, 1G Ethernet packet content inspection engines, 10G and 1G Ethernet MACs, and TOE/UOE/ PCIe/DMA controller integrated system solutions. They are targeted to several vertical markets, data centre servers, web servers, high performance computing, cloud computing servers and storage, plus all other networking and telecommunication equipment makers, military and aerospace. The list goes on and on.
Q: For your offload engine products, what kind of performance figures can be achieved, and how do these compare to conventional network interfaces and software stacks?
A: The performance figures are excellent. Our TOE has been proven by many many customers to offer a full TCP Offload in 100 nanoseconds, or less. Not only is its latency the lowest, it also offers highest TCP performance at 95% of total available.
Q: How are you leveraging FPGAs in your products? Are you agnostic as to the FPGA silicon?
A: We are FPGA agnostic. Since we are not dependent on any aspect of any particular FPGA vendor, the architecture flexibility allows it to be ported to any FPGA or ASIC, besides Altera and Xilinx that we currently have. There are ASIC implementations underway.
Q: What financial markets applications are you addressing with your FPGA products? Where is the interest?
A: To start with, most of the low-latency appliance markets, order execution flow, feed handlers, arbitrage and many other areas within applications that require ultra-low latency, ultra-low jitter and ultra-high deterministic performance.
Q: What’s next for Intilop in terms of your technology? And for your business?
A: To keep our technology leadership by offering solutions based around our technology and introduce next generation IPs and solutions in the 40G space.
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