The Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC) has benchmarked Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time (SLERT) delivering record-breaking performance, says Novell. SLERT results showed “the lowest mean and maximum latencies ever recorded at high rates with the Reuters Market Data System… (RMDS),” claims the company.

According to Novell, SLERT also demonstrated the highest RMDS throughput for a two-socket server. The results were “significantly better” than similar benchmarks performed by STAC on other Linux- and UNIX-based systems using similar hardware, claims Novell. The SLERT implementation ran on HP c-Class Blades (pictured above), Intel quad-core Xeon processors, Voltaire InfiniBand hardware, and Voltaire Messaging Accelerator (VMA) software.

Released in November 2007, SLERT version 10 offers reduced system latency or delay and improved predictability compared to earlier releases, says Novell. SLERT is sold in two versions, one of which uses a real-time enhanced open source kernel, while the other leans on Concurrent's shielded processor technology. SLERT is targeted primarily at the financial services sector in real-time trading systems.

STAC's results showed that the SLERT-based system processed 10.1 million updates per second, more than 670 percent higher than “an alternative solution using a general purpose operating system and gigabit Ethernet technologies,” says Novell. It was also said to deliver the lowest maximum RMDS latencies at rates above 200,000 updates per second. SLERT maintained under 0.67 milliseconds of mean latency at rates of up to 750,000 updates per second, and maximum latencies never exceeded 3.01 milliseconds, says the company.

Stated Jack Gidding, associate director of STAC, “Market data latency and throughput have a huge impact on the overall speed with which a trading firm can execute a transaction in response to new information.”

Availability

The full report from STAC, called “RMDS 6.3 with Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time on HP c-Class Blades, Intel Xeon, and Voltaire InfiniBand,” should be here. More information on SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time, may be found here.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.