Cisco Offers World's Lowest Latency Networking Technology for High Performance Data Center Environments
Performance Data Center Environments
Worldwide Networking Leader Delivers up to 60% Faster Performance Than
Competitors; Financial Traders Gain Competitive Edge With Cisco Nexus
3548 High-Performance Switch That Breaks the 200-Nanosecond Latency
Barrier
SAN JOSE, CA--(Sep 19, 2012) - Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced the
Cisco Nexus® 3548 with Algorithm Boost (or Algo Boost) technology, a
groundbreaking networking innovation which delivers up to 60 percent
network-access performance improvement over competing full-featured 10
Gigabit (GB) Ethernet switches*. Designed for use in high performance
computing, high performance trading, and big data environments, this new
switch offers network-access performance as low as 190 nanoseconds (ns)
-- a huge performance improvement enabled by the unique Algo Boost
technology developed by silicon engineers at Cisco.
With numerous patents pending, the Cisco Nexus 3548 switch extends
Cisco's leadership in networking by pairing performance and
ultra-low-latency with innovations in visibility, automation, monitoring
and precise time synchronization.
Network performance is of paramount importance in high performance
trading markets where obtaining and acting on real-time equities,
options and other financial market information nanoseconds faster than
competitors may be worth millions of dollars. The Nexus® 3548 can give
traders a competitive advantage. Globally interconnected financial
markets have elevated the demands on trading networks, making visibility
and control equally critical to performance. Proactive management of
market volatility, granular real-time monitoring, and precision timing
accuracy of trade events give trading participants greater control and
visibility at peak opportunity times across the globe. By providing
these capabilities, the Cisco Nexus 3548 with Algo Boost enhances the
Cisco High Performance Trading Fabric architecture that helps enable
greater business agility and intelligence for customers without imposing
performance or latency penalties.
Key Highlights:
Cisco ultra-low-latency switch with Cisco Algo Boost technology, is the
fastest full-featured Ethernet switch in the industry
- The Nexus 3548 one-rack-unit (1RU) 10 GB Ethernet switch running in
"warp mode" offers latencies as low as 190 ns in those environments with
small to medium Layer 2 and Layer 3 scaling requirements.
- The ultra-low-latency switch also facilitates the efficient delivery
of stock market data to financial trading servers in as little as 50 ns
with the warp switch port analyzer (SPAN) feature.
-The Nexus 3548 also includes Hitless Network Address Translation
(NAT), a critical feature to allow algorithmic traders to easily connect
to any trading venue they desire without any latency penalty.
- Cisco Nexus 3548 switch latency speeds were verified using Spirent
TestCenter across various workloads and using testing specifications
developed jointly with Spirent Communications.
Superior analytical framework gives greater visibility for
high-performance environments
- The Nexus 3548 is the first switch to integrate the unique Cisco®
Algo Boost technology in the ASIC (Application Specific Integrated
Circuits) switching silicon that provides granular visibility into how
the switch is performing while in production to help financial traders
accelerate price discovery, increase order flow liquidity, and better
manage regulatory requirements.
- Precision Time Protocol helps trading firms keep their entire
infrastructure highly synchronized, allowing them to correlate network
events and better achieve regulatory compliance and digital forensics.
- Active Buffer Monitoring proactively monitors and alerts users to
congestion points that could be occurring and may negatively impact
application performance.
- Intelligent Traffic Mirroring consists o
f filtering and nanosecond
time-stamping of captured traffic, which can help traders gain greater
visibility into why gapping, slippage and slow order situations occur,
correlating these trends with analytics tools to help enable smarter
trading decisions.
Supporting Quotes:
Nigel Harold, head of Business Development Technology, London Stock
Exchange
"London Stock Exchange is at the heart of the global financial market
and home to some of the largest, most successful and dynamic companies
in the world. Our members expect to connect using high performing and
reliable infrastructure for real-time trading and market data. The new
Algo Boost ASIC technology, that will be available in Cisco Nexus 3548
switch, offers ultra-low latency and unique features that can increase
our visibility across the network and further boost reliability for our
customers."
David Rukshin, senior vice president, The D. E. Shaw Group
"We trade in markets around the globe in an increasingly competitive
environment, and investing in state-of-the-art technology is one of the
keys to producing attractive returns for our investors. Detecting and
handling short-lived congestion in information flows is business
critical, since the latency of packets that experience congestion in the
network would be significantly higher than the nominal latency of modern
Ethernet switches. Detecting these microbursts of traffic and measuring
short-lived congestion in hardware should be very valuable to our
investment businesses."
David Yen, senior vice president of Data Center Group at Cisco
"Today, Cisco has leapfrogged our competitors in delivering a full
featured switch that offers the lowest latency Ethernet in the
networking industry. The Nexus 3548 with the unique Cisco Algo Boost
technology implemented in ASIC provides a robust feature set to give
financial traders more control over their sophisticated trading
algorithms and respond more quickly to the changes in the market. In
addition to the performance, this unique ultra-low-latency Ethernet
technology is part of the unified data center fabric and offers strong
total cost of ownership for commercial high-performance computing and
big data environments as well as scale-out storage topologies."
Supporting Resource Links:
- InfoGraphic: Nexus 3548 Innovation
- Testing Results: Summary of Spirent Communications testing results of
Nexus 3548
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps11541/ps12581/white_paper_c11-716751.pdf
- View Cisco Nexus 3548 series switch website
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12581/index.html?CAMPAIGN=Monticello&COUNTRY_SITE=us&POSITION=link&REFERRING_SITE=press+release&CREATIVE=Press+Release+to+3548
- View Algo Boost Technology website
http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/data_center/algoboost.html?CAMPAIGN=Monticello&COUNTRY_SITE=us&POSITION=link&REFERRING_SITE=press+release&CREATIVE=PR%2Bto%2BLaunch
- Video: Cisco Executives discuss unique Algo Boost Technology
- Cisco Data Center Blog: Informative blog on game changing Algo Boost
technology
http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/cisco-algorithm-boost-and-nexus-3548
Tags: ASIC, Cisco, High Performance Trading, High Performance
Computing, HPC, London Stock Exchange, Network Innovation, Nexus,
High-Performance Trading Fabric, Unified Fabric, Nexus 3000, Nexus 3K,
Nexus 3500, Nexus 3548
* 60% faster performance and lowest latency is based on published
reports from Cisco and competitive 10 GB Ethernet Layer 2/3 switch
vendors
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About Cisco
Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking that
transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Cisco Canada
Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco, has offices across Canada
dedicated to customer support, sales and service. For ongoing news,
please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/
canada/.
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Cisco, the Cisco logo and Cisco Systems are registered trademarks or
trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United
States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in
this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of
the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco
and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Contact Information
Andrea Berry
StrategicAmpersand Inc. (for Cisco)
416-961-5595, Ext. 428
andberry@cisco.com
Karin Scott
Cisco
416-306-7164
kariscot@cisco.com

