London Stock Exchange Finishes Switch To Linux

DMandPenfold writes "The London Stock Exchange has successfully set into live trading a new matching engine based on Novell SUSE Linux technology, following successful last-step setup procedures on Saturday. The move has been billed as one of the LSE's most significant technological developments since the increasing prevalence of electronic trading led to the closure of the traditional exchange floor in 1986. LSE chief executive Xavier Rolet has insisted that the exchange, once a monopoly, will deliver record speed and stable trading in order to fight back against the fast erosion of its dominant marketshare by specialist electronic rivals."

Comments

London Linux

[RooftopActivity]

Does this mean the prompt will be a GBP (£) sign instead of a dollar ($) ?

Re:London Linux

[ggeens]

Does this mean the prompt will be a GBP (£) sign instead of a dollar ($) ?

No, but the root prompt will be £ instead of #.

Re:the problem is algorithmic trading...

[beelsebob]

What makes you think there needs to be exactly 1 problem?

Re:Even Higher Speed!

[Nursie]

It sucks money out of the stock market.

Fans of it will say it provides 'increased liquidity'.

Me, I say, it sucks monkey out of the stock market. If it didn't the HFT people wouldn't bother doing it. The money comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is other investors. If it *doesn't* come from somewhere then creating it means there's more money and it comes from everyone via inflation.

That's my take. May be wrong, may be dense, but that's my take. Me, I'd scale back the whole thing massively because I still haven't had anyone explain adequately to me how, after they've gone public, the company's stock market valuation matters (to the company) for anything at all, except for perhaps their ability to rack up debt.

Re:the problem is algorithmic trading...

[jo_ham]

The is only one problem: entropy, leading to the eventual heat death of the universe.

get the fact

[DUdsen]

Wasn't this the MS get the fact showcase as to how much better ms.net and sql server were compared to linux? Before the system came crashing down and latency became an issue?

Re:get the fact

[David Off]

Yes, it was one of them. I worked on another Reuters Intelligent Advisor which ran like a 3 legged dog, a very expensive dog, until someone did the decent thing and shot it through the head.

I don't think RIA's expensive failure can be wholly blamed on .net. I think the technical team deceived management and probably themselves about what they could do. They had drunk the SOA/Web Services kool aid and the architecture was basically wrong. I suspect a number of devs saw the project as resume keyword fodder.

Re:get the fact

[miffo.swe]

Still, Microsoft was heavily involved on every levels of the project. If Microsoft cant make .net / MSSQL work and design it right, who can?

Re:YES!!!! :)

[DrXym]

I didn't say cobble together. What I meant is Linux runs on big iron, it runs on PC architectures, it runs on racks. Multiple architectures, multiple roles, same OS. It makes it easier to put the system together when everything is running the same OS. I imagine that a system like a stock exchange would have embedded systems with honking amounts of memory for low latency streaming / quotes and large mainframe backends for recording trades. All tied together with the fastest network / backbone you could lay your hands on.

My understanding is the previous system was .NET over windows which raises large question marks over performance (e.g. unexpected garbage collections) and the sort of hardware that it could be run on.

Re:one problem

[InterGuru]

Blaming an economic collapses on greed is like blaming a bridge collapse on gravity. Both are always there, you design your system around them.