Velocimetrics Integrates AHA Accelerated Data Compression with TipOff Latency Tech

Velocimetrics acquired an exclusive worldwide license to sell TipOff in the financial sector last July after the platform's original developer, UK-based latency monitoring technology provider TS-Associates, was placed in administration.

Previously, TS-Associates leveraged software-based data compression, but by using the AHA374 GZIP compression/decompression card from AHA─a subsidiary of Moscow, Idaho-based Comtech Telecommunications Corporation─to capture traffic from applications and networks, Velocimetrics can now provide hardware-accelerated compression within TipOff. The card captures data at a rate of 40 gigabits per second (Gbps), up from 22Gbps previously, and compresses the data by up to 80 percent.

"The card takes the data and compresses it, but it's the software we have developed behind it that makes it most interesting," says Steve Rodgers, engineering lead at Velocimetrics, and former chief technology officer at TS-Associates. "The software utilizes the compression that AHA offers, and takes the compacted data and stores it on disk at a much lower volume."

This means customers can store five times as much data as before on a single 2U appliance, which will provide cost savings in the form of reduced heat, power and rack space requirements in datacenters. The card is likely to appeal to any customers looking to store and analyze large volumes of data, Rodgers adds.

AHA is specialized provider of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), circuitboards, and core technology for communications systems, which is why Velocimetrics chose to partner with the vendor rather than build a compression card itself, Rodgers says. "It's not the kind of thing that's easy to build.... You have to come from a specialized background to do this. A few years ago, we implemented software-based compression, but it takes up valuable CPU resources on the appliances. This hardware-accelerated data capture allows us to squeeze out more performance," he says.

The improvements to data capture and storage rates will enable TipOff customers to better monitor growing volumes of market data, and also ensure that 100 percent of market data is captured in the event of market disruptions such as exchange glitches.

"Customers are looking to capture traffic at multiple locations. For market data specifically, that might be the traffic when it comes into a co-location site then through the firewall, then into a feed handler, and subsequent to that, into pricing engines to trade gateways," Rodgers says. "When market conditions start to disrupt, the overall volumes at these points tend to increase, so customers want to capture the 100 percent truth of what's out there."

Velocimetrics recently completed testing with an unnamed client, and is now making the new hardware-accelerated compression widely available.