Ullink has added Ouch support to its UL IRIS+ pre-trade risk offering, reducing latency of checks from 3.5 microseconds previously attainable for the FIX protocol to just two microseconds. Ullink is leveraging FPGA-based network interface cards from Denmark’s Fiberblaze as part of its solution.
Ouch is binary protocol developed by Nasdaq OMX, and supported by the Nasdaq Stock Market and Nasdaq OMX BX market (Boston Stock Exchange as was) for order execution. It is more compact than the ubiquitous FIX protocol, and so has found favour for low-latency trading applications.
UL IRIS+ is an appliance providing risk controls for compliance with SEC 15C3-5 regulations, including price tolerance, order size and percentage checks. Fiberblaze provides 1 gigabit and 10 gigabit Ethernet cards, which also contain Xilinx FPGAs.
Note: Ouch – or OUCH in marketing speak – apparently, does not stand for anything. But I bet it really does. Anyone know?
