Solarflare and NovaSparks Launch Pure-FPGA Tick-To-Trade Development Platform That Slashes Man-Years of Effort

Developers will be bullish about this write-once-consume-everything platform that processes 60 market feeds through a single hardware programming interface

IRVINE, CA and NEW YORK, NY—April 23, 2018—Solarflare, a global leader in tick-to-trade networking solutions, and NovaSparks, the leading field programmable gate array (FPGA) market data company, today announced that they have combined forces to launch a full-FPGA tick-to-trade development platform for market makers, high-frequency traders, and large banks. Firms that already have FPGA developers typically take 4-6 man-months to add a feed handler. Firms without FPGA or feed handler expertise take a year to develop their first feed. With 60 market feeds, use of the NovaSparks development platform can save up to 15 man-years of valuable engineering resources. The FPGA platform represents the integration of NovaTick, the NovaSparks pure FPGA ticker-plant for market data, and Solarflare AOE Nanosecond TCP Stack (ANTS) for the trading algorithm and the order execution. It demonstrates tick-to-trade latencies that only FPGAs can deliver, slashes development time, and is available today from NovaSparks.

According to Luc Burgun, NovaSparks President, and CEO, “The introduction of the FPGA Tick-to-Trade development platform dramatically accelerates the development of pure FPGA systems. Combining Solarflare ANTS technology and NovaTick now more than ever allows trading firms to focus their FPGA development resources on proprietary trading strategies.”

“Server CPU performance is bounded by the clock rate and the architecture of the system. Little can be done to remove this bottleneck in electronic trading,” said Ahmet Houssein, Vice President of Marketing at Solarflare, “NovaSparks is pioneering 100% pure FPGA solutions which we expect will dominate the tick-to-trade landscape in the future.”

The NovaSparks FPGA development platform provides ultra-low latency performance of 810ns tick-to-trade using NASDAQ ITCH and OUCH, including book building; it also offers immediate access to the NovaSparks catalog of 60 pure FPGA feed-handlers. Thanks to its multi-FPGA architecture, the platform also allows for the implementation of sophisticated strategies consuming tens of thousands of symbols across multiple markets.

NovaSparks Pure FPGA Tick-to-Trade Development Platform

The platform embodies the integration of the two leading ultra-low latency products: NovaSparks NovaTick for Market Data and Solarflare ANTS for Order Execution. The platform can consume any of the 60 market data feeds offered by NovaSparks through a single hardware programming interface.

The development platform comes with the RTL source code of a working reference design. This design includes the market data decoding, an example of a trading algorithm and the sending of an order over TCP. The tick to trade latency is 810ns measured wire-to-wire including book building on the Nasdaq ITCH feed, strategy trigger and order transmission using Solarflare ANTS.

About NovaSparks

NovaSparks is the leader in FPGA-based high performance and ultra-low latency market data solutions for the financial industry. NovaSparks unique FPGA centric approach delivers sub-microsecond processing latency including book building, even during market peak periods. Available for over 60 feeds among the major Equity, Futures and Options venues across North America, Europe, and Asia, the feed handlers are packaged in easy-to-deploy appliances offering an extensive fan-out capability for market data distribution. Founded in 2008 and backed by well-established investors, NovaSparks’ offices are located in Paris, France and New York, USA.

About Solarflare

Solarflare is pioneering server connectivity for neural-class networks. From silicon to firmware to software, Solarflare provides a comprehensive, integrated set of technologies for distributed, ultra-scale, software-defined datacenters.

The Solarflare XtremeScale Architecture is a design framework which includes a comprehensive suite of features for ultra-scale environments: High-bandwidth, ultra-low-latency, ultra-scale connectivity, software-defined, secure with hardware firewalls, and instrumented for line-speed telemetry.

Solarflare solutions have earned a sterling reputation in financial services and are used by virtually every major global exchange, commercial bank and hedge fund. This exacting, regulated performance uniquely qualifies our solutions for use in ultra-scale applications in IoT, big data and artificial intelligence where low latency, robust security, and insightful telemetrics are critical.

Solarflare solutions are available from leading distributors and value-added resellers, as well as from major global manufacturers. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California, and operates R&D facilities in Cambridge, UK and New Delhi, India.