NASDAQ Traders Get First Nanosecond Market Data Service

Burstream, a provider of ultra-low latency feed handlers and direct market data technology, has launched its NanoSpeed Market Data Mesh service for NASDAQ OMX proprietary traders.

The service provides a deterministic data feed processing time of 600 nanoseconds.

The Burstream market data infrastructure is in operation today at NASDAQ Carteret facilities and is immediately available for clients to utilize by crossconnecting to the mesh or directly hosting their algorithms on co-located servers.

"Burstream's turnkey solution delivers a substantial trading advantage - ten times faster than hardware accelerated approaches," states Paul Barringer, CEO of Burstream. "Our NanoSpeed Mesh gives proprietary trading firms the ability to quickly and dramatically increase the performance of their latency-sensitive algorithms," continues Barringer.

The service is based on a high performance, engineered infrastructure that uses FPGA (field programmable gate array) 'pure-silicon' feed handlers and order book managers supplied by NovaSparks as well as componentry from Vello Systems, Arista Networks and other high-performance technology suppliers.

The FPGA feed handlers and order book managers from NovaSparks enable the trading algorithm to access market data near the speed of light, with no slowdowns during market bursts. Referred to as deterministic latency, it eliminates fluctuations typically seen in conventional software and hardware-accelerated approaches.

Using this technology, Burstream ensures algorithms receive normalized order book data via dedicated PCIe (PCI Express(TM)) connections in less than 900 nanoseconds, even during volume bursts and message peaks.

"Sustainable nanosecond speeds are a breakthrough from current offerings on the market" observed Larry Tabb, founder of the Tabb Group. "Making the jump from microseconds to nanoseconds will ratchet up the competition and could be a game changer for latency-sensitive strategies and certain trading houses" concluded Tabb. Functionality of the feed handler includes subscription-based filtering, feed normalization and order book management. Initially available for NASDAQ's ITCH feed, additional venues will be announced over the coming months. Melanie Rodier has worked as a print and broadcast journalist for over 10 years, covering business and finance, general news, and film trade news. Prior to joining Wall Street & Technology in April 2007, Melanie lived in Paris, where she worked for the International Herald ... View Full Bio