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 Expands Networking Clout with QLogic Buy … But What Impact on Trading Systems?

Subscribe to our newsletter

Intel’s planned acquisition of QLogic’s InfiniBand business – announced last week – further advances its general ‘world domination’ plans in networking. And while its aspirations go way beyond low-latency trading, expect a trickle down that will over time impact how automated trading systems are implemented.

QLogic’s InfiniBand offerings – shortly to be owned by Intel – include switches and network cards, based on its own TrueScale silicon. It’s a product line that will “bring increased options and exceptional value to our data centre customers,” says an Intel executive.

Don’t expect much near-term impact on systems deployed in the financial markets, since QLogic was hardly a player in the vertical where InfiniBand and Mellanox Technologies are synonymous.

Longer term, though, Intel’s continuing push into networking will likely affect not only how data centres in general are built, but technology choices for those implementing low-latency architectures for financial trading.

That push began in 2008 with the acquisition of NetEffect, which used previous InfiniBand experience to implement Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) protocols in 10 gigabit Ethernet network adaptors.

Last year, it snapped up Fulcrum Microsystems, which develops Ethernet silicon that is found in switches from the likes of Arista Networks and IBM System Networking (Blade Network Technologies as was).

Now it has InfiniBand technology to go along with its strong Ethernet lineup. More significantly, its technology leadership credentials are strong enough to heavily influence technology directions in the financial markets.

While Ethernet technology is approaching the performance of InfiniBand in terms of latency and jitter, the general school of thought is that InfiniBand still has the edge, though it comes with implementation and management baggage. With Intel’s muscle behind Fulcrum’s core technology, further improvements in latency/jitter are very likely, as is packaging of compute and network processing on a single chip.

It will be interesting to see how Intel slices up the networking pie between Ethernet and InfiniBand. One might reasonably surmise that it will continue to push Ethernet in the financial markets, and direct InfiniBand to HPC applications, and leverage it for its many-core processor developments.

It will also be worth watching whether this acquisition also pushes Mellanox into a similar corporate event, as it faces increased competition in its general markets. Some have suggested that Oracle might make a pitch, since it uses Mellanox’s InfiniBand technology in several of its appliance products (including those tuned to run Java for financial trading). Oracle also has an 8.7% stake in Mellanox.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: High-Performance Networks & Low-Latency Connectivity for Trading

With financial markets becoming more complex and interconnected in today’s electronic trading environment, trading firms, exchanges, and infrastructure providers need to continually push the boundaries of network performance to stay ahead. Ultra-low latency, seamless connectivity, and resilient infrastructure are no longer just advantages – to stay competitive, they’re necessities. This webinar, part of the A-Team...

BLOG

Nasdaq Suspends High-Speed Trading Service Amid Regulatory Scrutiny

Nasdaq has halted a high-speed trading service following concerns raised by competitors and regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The service, which offered select clients access to lower-latency hollow-core fiber optic cables, was not publicly disclosed and had not undergone the SEC’s rule-filing process. Low-latency network provider McKay Brothers brought the...

EVENT

Data Management Summit New York City

Now in its 15th year the Data Management Summit NYC brings together the North American data management community to explore how data strategy is evolving to drive business outcomes and speed to market in changing times.

GUIDE

Enterprise Data Management

The current financial crisis has highlighted that financial institutions do not have a sufficient handle on their data and has prompted many of these institutions to re-evaluate their approaches to data management. Moreover, the increased regulatory scrutiny of the financial services community during the past year has meant that data management has become a key...