A new Sydney-based financial technology firm believes it has created the fastest switching device on the planet, with a latency of around 130 nanoseconds.
Zeptonics’ ZeptoMux is the first product from a new firm which caters to latency-sensitive financial clients.
The 130ns ZeptoMux is an ethernet device that delivers a fibre-to-fibre performance (including SFP+s) that’s significantly faster than any switch on the market. A 10GbE 23-to-1 multiplexing switch, it is optimised for trading applications. The 24-port single rack unit appliance is scheduled for general availability in August.
Founded and largely staffed by former quant traders and trading system developers, Zeptonics is billed as a firm that was conceived to solve problems encountered during the principals’ trading careers.
“The team at Zeptonics are re-thinking traditional approaches to latency challenges,” said founder Matt Hurd. “With hardware, for example, most network switches include features that deliver flexibility, but deny you the opportunity to aggressively minimise latency. When designing the ZeptoMux, our engineers stripped out all non-essential functionality and created a streamlined ‘race car’ device to replace the broad-purpose ‘sports car’ switches currently used by the industry.”
Hurd said the ZeptoMux is designed to funnel messages from multiple downstream nodes to a single upstream service, and back again, as quickly as possible.
“That makes it perfect for co-located trading environments, and other speed-sensitive network scenarios,” he said. “Unlike general purpose n-to-n switches, the ZeptoMux is an n-to-1-to-n device that’s specifically engineered for financial market funnels, where low latency performance is in highest demand.”