NanoSpeed has halved the latency of its first FPGA based trading gateway with the addition of Nano-Gateway, an FPGA including interfaces for up to 32,000 trading algos, market data feed handlers, pre-trade risk checks, limits that can be changed on the fly, and the ability to deliver client orders to an exchange in less than 220 nanoseconds.
The gateway achieves two, and sometimes up to three, times the speed of the company’s Nano-TG gateway, which was introduced in 2013, through developments including the use of a proprietary version of the ultra low-latency Nasdaq UDP for Orders (UFO) protocol that is more than twice as fast as TCP. Exchanges supporting UFO and recently connected to Nano-Gateway include the Philadelphia Exchange, Boston Exchange and Nasdaq. Connectivity to other exchanges continues to be based on fast, proprietary NanoSpeed technology.
Sanjay Shah, chief technology officer at NanoSpeed, explains: “Nano-Gateway offers exceptional performance and therefore a massive reduction in TCO for financial institutions in the low-latency, high-frequency trading space. One of the things the gateway offers is load balancing. If there are unusually large volumes of client-side orders they are automatically balanced across more than 1,000 venue connections on the FPGA, maintaining very low latency and determinism. Even with 500,000 messages per second the latency remains constant at 220 nanoseconds.”
With order entry, pre-trade risk, market data and connectivity built into the 25×25 millimetre Nano-Gateway FPGA, Shah adds: “As far as we know, our FPGA is three times faster than others in the market and anything from 50 to 500 times faster than similar software products.”
Nano-Gateway is available immediately and is being tested by early adopters. NanoSpeed has about 12 customers using its products, which include not only Nano-Gateway, but also Nano-TG, Nano-Risk and Nano-Data, and expects some to exploit the speed and functionality of its latest FPGA solution.
