Latency in depth

In Cinnober’s latest white paper we go into depth on the subject of latency; detailing the factors that affect it and how it can be minimized, disclosing own benchmark configurations and our roadmap to reach below 25 microseconds latency, door-to-door, within 18 months.

Today speed is crucial to any marketplace that wants to stay competitive. At the same time, with high-frequency trading gaining an increasing share of overall volumes, the ability to manage rising transaction volumes is also a necessity.

In 2007, Cinnober published a white paper which established some best practices for measuring latency in financial markets and publishing the results in a clear and understandable fashion. We also disclosed benchmark figures from our TRADExpress Trading System with a level of transparency seen neither before nor since, showing that the context of the testing environment is of the utmost importance. Since that paper was published, latency has become a widely-used metric.

In this new paper, we continue to explore the measurement of latency and, more importantly, what can be done to minimize it. The paper details test configurations and show how these affect the trade-off between latency and throughput. In Cinnober’s latest published benchmarks on a full-blown TRADExpress Trading System, a door-to-door latency of 286 microseconds was achieved and a business logic latency of 138 microseconds. We also publish our roadmap to further reduce latency, the goal of which is to go below 80 microseconds door-to-door within a year and 25 microseconds within 18 months.

Download the 16-page white paper Now