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JPMorgan Rolls Out (Another) FPGA Supercomputer

Posted by timothy on from the we-call-this-one-the-fleecer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "JP Morgan is expanding its use of dataflow supercomputers to speed up more of its fixed income trading operations. Earlier this year, the bank revealed how it reduced the time it took to run an end-of-day risk calculation from eight hours down to just 238 seconds. The new dataflow supercomputer, where the computer chips are tailored to perform specific, bespoke tasks (as explained in this Wall Street Journal article) — will be equivalent to more than 12,000 conventional x86 cores, providing 128 Teraflops of performance."

6 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. All this.. by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So they can project how much money to borrow from the Federal Government the next time they have lent beyond sane limits to property speculators or invested in schemes even Mandelbrot wouldn't be able to simulate.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:All this.. by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let's hope the federal government regulators are paying attention this time.

      It would suck for them to be confused by the cool new computer and unable to seperate systemic or institutional risk from faster calculating devices.

      Wishful thinking. Wall Street moves at the Speed of Light with all these computer trades now. Federal regulators need a super computer to keep an eye on JPMorgan, et al.

      "You were insolvent 23 times today, for a total of 3.77 seconds. Federal guidelines mandate not being insolvent more than 15 times per day, over 1.78 seconds."

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:All this.. by iluvcapra · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way with his fellows, so that no-one can really blame him."

      --- John Maynard Keynes

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    3. Re:All this.. by Beeftopia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      1. regulators are bought and paid for, besides they are not the brightest of the pack - if they were they would be farming gold on wallstreet themselves 2. regulations are always looking backwards at the last crisis, never predict origins of the next one 3. when everything is leveraged 30-50x there is nothing you can do to provide stability that is not make-believe 4. you don't need fancy regulation to crack down on good ol' fraud, you just make it harder for small players to comply

      When things are going great, no one wants to change ANYTHING, no matter how outrageous, for fear of upsetting the apple cart and ending the party.

      When things go bad, only then are people willing to change. Except of course, those still engaging in outrageous practices, as they are still making money.

      As far as regulators being dim, sometimes that's true, sometimes not. IMHO, the far greater problem is the muzzling and influencing of regulators by the industries they are tasked to regulate via the politicians owned by those industries.

  2. too bad by Khashishi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These banks aren't just siphoning money, they are also siphoning talent away from more important projects. The people working on these things could be brilliant physicists or engineers, if they weren't sucked into the dark side.

  3. Re:risk vs. electricity by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    using FPGA's instead of x86 would probably consume a significant amount less electricity. using manpower is good in terms of the many men being paid for their efforts instead or a few ceos just pocketing the money as extra bonuses