Accelerating electronic trading with the Alveo X3 Series

The Alveo X3 series is the first AMD network card designed with screened FPGAs and optimised specifically for low latency trading – in production and now shipping.

The Alveo X3 series offers both turnkey deployment and custom implementation paths for various low latency trading applications. The portfolio comes in two hardware variants, one of which features an optional software upgrade.

The Alveo X3522 low latency network adapter can serve as a plug-and-play NIC, delivering deterministic response time for reliable trade execution and serving as a natural upgrade from the ubiquitous X2 series NIC. The platform comes with Onload application software support to eliminate latency penalties of standard Linux networking stacks and support other host-based software such as TCPDirect.

The Alveo X3522 card can also operate in hybrid mode via a software upgrade, providing access to FPGA programmable logic. This enables computational offload to be closer to the wire to accelerate various trading strategies. Algorithm developers can use the Vitis Unified Software Platform to design plugins in C/C++ using hundreds of Vitis library functions and building blocks or create designs from the ground up using Vitis HLS.

The Alveo X3522PV adaptable accelerator card provides a fully hardware programmable option for solution vendors to develop highly customised fintech applications, enabled by the Vivado Design Suite.

The Alveo X3 series delivers an immediate low latency advantage through turnkey networking IP, state-of-the-art connectivity, and hardware adaptability for evolving use cases and future requirements. At the platform’s foundation is the 16nm Virtex UltraScale+ FPGA, making the Alveo X3 series the only FPGA-based Fintech card in a -3 speed grade for both turnkey and custom data paths. The card also features 4x 10/25G ports, doubling that of its X2 series predecessor.

“Electronic trading continues to evolve and the race to the lowest latency trade execution is critical to how financial firms operate,” said Hamid Reza Salehi, Director of Product Marketing, Fintech and Blockchain Technologies, AMD. “The Alveo X3 series brings low latency and adaptive computing onto a single platform to give our customers a competitive advantage for today’s markets and future requirements.”

Alveo X3 series provides hardware programmers and ecosystem partners a scalable platform backed by AMD and designed with the future in mind with adaptive computing technology.  Among these strategic partners is Orthogone Technologies, a specialist in electronic design services and product development.

"Co-developing a solution that combines Orthogone's ultra-low-latency (ULL) FPGA Framework with the AMD Alveo X3 series will give our mutual customers access to a flexible and high-performance FPGA platform for accelerating electronic trading strategies," states Alexandre Raymond, Co-Founder, and CTO of Orthogone.

We’re excited to deliver this next-gen electronic trading platform to our customers and the broader fintech market.

Come see the Alveo X3 series showcased at the upcoming Securities Technology Analysis Centre (STAC) Summits in New York (Oct. 19), Chicago (Nov. 1) and London (Nov. 10), and FIX Conference in Australia (Nov. 29).