This information is relatively useless to me. Was the old system slower because of the OS, .NET, or some other factor(s)?
London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
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Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#12Is this the same system that replaced the failed Microsoft platform? http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_aban... Microsoft had run huge ads on how LSE was using .NET and Windows in critical financial applications. Within a year LSE had suffered crashes in the same critical areas.
I believe so, yes. In fairness, though, it may not have been MS' fault - crappy programming is crappy, no matter the underlying OS. And Linux fanboys should wait to see if the new system has roll-out issues...
I agree. At these speeds it has less to with OS and/or language and has more to do with smart programming decisions. PS - Singapore Stock Exchange quotes a faster latency than Nasdaq and LSE:
http://www.a-teamgroup.com/article/voltaire-powering-fastest...
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#13This information is relatively useless to me. Was the old system slower because of the OS, .NET, or some other factor(s)?
I believe it was the OS from memory. This was around the time Accenture lead development wasn't working out a few years ago.
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#14It's fascinating that these latencies are an order of magnitude faster than most 'web services'. Can anyone provide more insight into what is specifically involved in executing a single trade? Are they just enqueueing a trade message in this latency or actually executing the trade? Are they including network latency in these numbers? Also, does anyone have any insights into the hardware and customizations?
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#15It's fascinating that these latencies are an order of magnitude faster than most 'web services'. Can anyone provide more insight into what is specifically involved in executing a single trade? Are they just enqueueing a trade message in this latency or actually executing the trade? Are they including network latency in these numbers? Also, does anyone have any insights into the hardware and customizations?
The latencies are typically quoted as round trip through the matching engine. This does not include transit latency to the matching engine but will include any internal transit latency once the matching engine has the order. So you can assume it is from when the order message reaches the network interface on the order processor to when the response leaves the network interface towards the market participant.
The amount of work the matching engine has to do is non-trivial but straightforward. Take order, look at type, if market order look for a match on the limit order book, if not handle appropriately (this bit is not included in the latency as it might involve routing to other venues, etc). If it is a limit order it must find the right place to position that order within the order book. Building an order book data structure that is cache friendly and thus very fast is not rocket science but it certainly isn't easy.
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#16It's fascinating that these latencies are an order of magnitude faster than most 'web services'. Can anyone provide more insight into what is specifically involved in executing a single trade? Are they just enqueueing a trade message in this latency or actually executing the trade? Are they including network latency in these numbers? Also, does anyone have any insights into the hardware and customizations?
I'm a software developer at an exchange in the US. The LSE has not released details of how it is measuring "latency", but FWIW, we measure latency as the time it takes to submit an order and receive an order acknowledgment or fill, with both the sending and receiving outside our firewall. The two biggest SW components involved are the FIX handler (the component used to process orders; FIX is an industry standard protocol) and the matching engine (the component used to match buy and sell orders). I could of course spend hours talking about our hardware and software customizations, but it's a very competitive industry. Our software is C++ running on Linux, and that's about as much detail as I'm willing to go into.
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#17Is this the same system that replaced the failed Microsoft platform? http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_aban... Microsoft had run huge ads on how LSE was using .NET and Windows in critical financial applications. Within a year LSE had suffered crashes in the same critical areas.
RTFA it says all that in the second paragraph.
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#18This information is relatively useless to me. Was the old system slower because of the OS, .NET, or some other factor(s)?
I believe it was the OS from memory. This was around the time Accenture lead development wasn't working out a few years ago.
I would be really surprised if it was the fault of the OS. I mean, Windows can be really fast, in the right hands, especially since they've introduced HTTP.SYS (parts of the HTTP server now run in kernel level). However, .NET being a garbage-collected, managed and JITted environemnt, it is maybe not the best tool for achieving these kind of response times reliably. Any serious and competent .NET developer would admit that.
In general, I would blame the incompetence of Accenture for the failure: bad decisions, bad architecture, bad management, using the wrong tools, crappy code.
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#19Normally I'd thoroughly welcome any news of large Linux-based systems replacing slower MS-based ones, but in this case... ... these days I can't help thinking "is faster really a good idea?"
My first thought after reading the title was: "Oh great, now they can trade faster than they can think".
And then…
Re: London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe so, yes. In fairness, though, it may not have been MS' fault - crappy programming is crappy, no matter the underlying OS. And Linux fanboys should wait to see if the new system has roll-out issues...
If I remember correctly, the LSE brought in Microsoft themselves to fix the problems. And Microsoft couldn't.
Source?