Metamako, the leading specialist provider of FPGA-enabled networking platforms, has launched MetaConnect 96, the first 96-port deterministic, low latency device for the financial markets. It doubles the number of ports compared to MetaConnect 48, while keeping deterministic port-to-port latency at 6 nanoseconds, at the same industry-leading latency level as its other devices.
The MetaConnect 96 platform can be upgraded to employ Metamako’s FPGA-based technology, which will allow clients to run Metamako’s proprietary applications, along with applications from Metamako’s ecosystem partners.
Dave Snowdon, Metamako CTO, says: “Our clients have found so many uses for MetaConnect 48 that they’ve been asking us for more ports, which is why we developed MetaConnect 96. They have come up with a number of creative ways of switching more connections by cascading multiple devices and increasing the port count. The new device gives firms a huge amount of flexibility in how they connect their systems. They can connect servers, FPGAs, switches and cross-connects (for example exchange connections), among others. As with our other devices, MetaConnect 96 can be reconfigured remotely; it’s also available with our FPGA technology built in.” He adds: “As all our devices, it is an exceptionally efficient way of delivering market data, and much more deterministic than traditional switches.”
MetaConnect 96 offers the same functionality as MetaConnect 16 and MetaConnect 48, but with greater flexibility, thanks to its number of ports. Clients also have the option of adding FPGA functionality. The key benefits include:
- Market data fan-out.
- Scalable broadcast.
- Connection monitoring.
- Patching, tapping and timestamping.
- Two layers of MetaConnect 96 allows a venue to distribute to up to 9216 market participants, with switching latency of just 10 nanosecond, and under 100 picoseconds’ jitter, making it a highly deterministic way of delivering market data.
- Up to 96 ports can be patched at any time. Leveraging MetaWatch allows a subset of these ports to be tapped, timestamped, buffered and aggregated.
With the optional FPGA upgrade the platform also runs the MetaWatch, MetaMux and MetaFilter apps, allowing:
- Muxing.
- Tap aggregation.
- Packet capture.
- Running third-party apps.
- It can be configured, orchestrated and automated remotely (from a single server) through a range of enterprise-standard tools such as SNMP, REST and NetConf.
