Tibco system speeds up financial trading

Application messaging system aims to cut network latency to less than half a micro-second

Service-oriented architecture firm Tibco has unveiled a new application messaging system called Faster Than Light (FTL) that is designed to speed up financial trading.

The FTL messaging system is aimed at stock exchange and financial services firms who want their server and network infrastructure to deliver financial applications messages as fast as possible between trading floor and global stock exchange financial systems.

"Messaging speed and getting messages from point A to point B is critically important and the whole crux of our FTL launch," said Ram Menon, Tibco worldwide marketing executive vice president.

Tibco has collaborated with Arista Networks, Dell and Mellanox Technologies using multi-core Intel Xeon processors, InfiniBand and system architectures to minimise end-to-end application level latency across firms' server hardware and networks.

Arista Networks recently announced its 7124SX network switch, saying it is the fastest in the world, with standard small form-factor pluggable (SFP+) optical transceiver interfaces, and having a sub-500 nanosecond latency.

Latency is a measure of how fast network traffic can get there and back from a specific destination - usually measured by a network 'ping'.

Tibco did not divulge how much FTL would cost, but said that the pricing model would on a per application basis rather CPU or CPU core-based.