Undiscovered Country of HFT: FPGA JIT Ethernet Packet Assembly

michaelmalak writes "In a technique that reminds me of the just-in-time torpedo engineering of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a company called Argon Design has "developed a high performance trading system" that puts an FPGA — and FPGA-based trading algorithms — right in the Ethernet switch. And it isn't just to cut down on switch/computer latency — they actually start assembling and sending out the start of an Ethernet packet simultaneously with receiving and decoding incoming price quotation Ethernet packets, and decide on the fly what to put in the outgoing buy/sell Ethernet packet. They call these techniques 'inline parsing' and 'pre-emption.'"

Comments

Re:What a waste

[larry bagina]

You could be used to develop more efficient hardware for everyone to use, or fix medical conditions, rather than posting on slashdot.

Re:What a waste

[internerdj]

Apparently they make life possible because they move capital where it is needs to be, and deserve the medal of honor for what they graciously give the rest of us. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/99-owe-debt-gratitude-1-harry-binswanger-153327379.html

Re:What a waste

[GameboyRMH]

So thank goodness their moneyed overlords are willing to lend some of the cash made on the backs of such creative people, so that the creative insightful people can do more work and give the lion's share back to the moneyed overlords. It's a good thing we have a dynastic class of people controlling all the capital.

Re: buy buy sell buy buy sell sell jump.

[jd2112]

if (likelihood-of-getting-caught == high)
{throw (EXCEPTION_POSSIBLE_ILLEGAL_TRADE)}
else {SetCompliance (IGNORE_ILLEGAL_TRADES)}