The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) has selected Exegy to provide FPGA-based market data feed handlers as part of its launch infrastructure.
TXSE is positioning itself as the first fully integrated U.S. equities exchange built from scratch in more than 25 years. As part of that ground-up approach, the venue has opted to deploy FPGA technology to ingest and process direct feeds from U.S. equity markets, rather than relying on conventional software-based feed handling infrastructure.“Two factors drove TXSE’s decision to adopt a full FPGA approach,” comments Laurent de Barry, Exegy’s Chief Product Officer, in conversation with TradingTech Insight.
“The first was efficiency. Market data volumes continue to rise, with no sign of levelling off, and in a traditional software-based environment it becomes increasingly difficult to predict how many additional servers will be needed simply to maintain existing service levels. For a new exchange, that creates uncertainty around infrastructure footprint and long-term scalability. FPGA-based market data processing gives TXSE tighter control over both performance and hardware footprint from day one, while providing headroom for continued growth.”
He continues: “The second factor is strategic. TXSE is a technology-led organisation and wanted infrastructure capable of delivering consistently low latency and minimal jitter under all market conditions. That choice reflects the broader level of investment and technical ambition the exchange is signalling to the market.”
Exegy’s FPGA feed handlers will process direct feeds only, enabling TXSE to maintain a real-time consolidated view of the best displayed prices across venues. Under U.S. regulation, exchanges must route orders to other venues when better-priced liquidity is available, making the performance and determinism of external market data ingestion a core architectural requirement.
“Our FPGA feed handlers are engineered to deliver median latencies at or below one microsecond, with peak latencies staying under ten microseconds,” notes de Barry. “Those are our design benchmarks. Actual performance within TXSE’s environment will depend on how the technology is deployed and integrated into their broader infrastructure.”
TXSE’s fully integrated positioning reflects its ability to design without legacy constraints. Unlike incumbent U.S. exchanges, it does not need to accommodate decades-old systems or maintain backward compatibility for an existing customer base.
“It has been a long time since a stock exchange built its technology stack entirely from the ground up,” says de Barry. “Starting with a clean slate allows TXSE to assess today’s technology landscape and design accordingly, without being constrained by legacy systems or the need to maintain backward compatibility for existing clients.
The selection also highlights the structural pressures facing exchanges more broadly. Each new venue adds another direct feed that other exchanges and market participants must process. At the same time, the number of listed securities continues to grow, and per-symbol message traffic remains elevated. The result is sustained expansion in data volumes across venues and instruments.Against that backdrop, exchanges are reassessing the balance between building and buying infrastructure. Continued growth in message rates, combined with hardware procurement challenges and rising operational complexity, is prompting some venues to evaluate whether legacy software-based deployments remain optimal. FPGA acceleration offers a route to contain server footprint while maintaining performance headroom, particularly where deterministic behaviour under stress conditions is essential.
Whether TXSE’s ground-up architecture will translate into competitive differentiation in an already fragmented U.S. market structure remains to be seen. However, its decision to prioritise deterministic, hardware-accelerated feed handling from launch signals how new entrants are redefining exchange infrastructure.
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