Kx and Vexata break records in STAC benchmarks of tick data analytics

16 May 2017

Kx and Vexata break records in STAC benchmarks of tick data analytics

San Jose/London, May 16th, 2017: Kx Systems (Kx), a subsidiary of First Derivatives (FD) plc and provider of the industry-leading kdb+ time series database, and Vexata, the leader in high performance enterprise storage systems, announced record shattering results in independent testing by the Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC®).

With kdb+ running on Intel x86 multi-core processors using the Vexata Array with NVMe Flash SSDs, the solution set new records in 8 of 17 baseline STAC-M3™ benchmarks (the Antuco suite), and 14 of 24 benchmarks in the STAC-M3 scaling suite (Kanaga). The joint solution was able to achieve 36.8 GB/s of effective application-level throughput in bandwidth-intensive year-high bid tests. The solution also shattered existing records for several read-IO intensive queries like volume-weighted average bid, as well as balanced compute and IO workloads like statistical calculations.*

In the era of Big Fast Data analytics, kdb+ has set industry benchmarks for speed and stability in high performance applications. It is widely used in the financial services industry for trading and risk management platforms and across a range of markets such as manufacturing, pharma, the Industrial Internet of Things, utilities and retail which face similarly demanding data challenges. Kx is also at the forefront of the use of predictive analytics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to drive operational intelligence and provide actionable insights.

The Vexata Array, built on Vexata’s breakthrough Real Time Architecture, enables Enterprises to realize an order of magnitude higher performance and scale from their Database and Analytics platforms. Vexata Arrays can be deployed simply and seamlessly into existing SAN environments and alongside existing storage. The Vexata Array is in production and available in a range of capacities at market leading economics.

Glenn Wright, Systems Architect for Kx added: “These results show the mutual benefits gained by placing the latest technology alongside kdb+. What stood out are the streaming I/O performance results, alongside some very good results for discrete market data set queries. This should be particularly appealing to those customers wishing to consolidate their market data on a single storage device being shared between multiple analytics systems, for example between different business functions or business units of an organization.”

Peter Lankford, Director of STAC, said: “Trading firms designed the STAC-M3 benchmark suite to represent a common set of performance-related challenges in financial time-series analytics. Competition requires capital markets organizations around the world to analyze more data in less time. This combination of Kx software and the Fibre Channel-based Vexata NVMe Flash Array established many new STACM3 records while running at large scale. “

Zahid Hussain, CEO of Vexata said: “We are very pleased to be working closely with Kx to provide a compelling high performance solution stack that enterprises can immediately deploy for their stock-ticker Analytics. The STAC-M3 results clearly showcase the unique performance benefits achievable through the Kx-Vexata solution.”

Mark Sykes, COO at Kx said: “Kx’s customers are always looking to increase performance for complex analytics on very large datasets. The approach taken by Vexata allows them to do this without the need for them to invest in a large storage system in order to achieve the results they want, lowering their total cost of ownership.”

For more information about Kx please visit www.kx.com. For general enquiries, write to info@kx.com or contact:

Octopus Group
kxSystems@octopusgrp.com
0845 370 7024

About FD and Kx

FD is a global technology provider with 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s largest finance, technology and energy institutions and employs over 1,700 people worldwide. The Group’s Kx technology is a leader in highperformance, in-memory computing, streaming analytics and operational intelligence. It delivers the best possible performance and flexibility for highvolume, data-intensive analytics and applications for multiple industries including finance, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing.

About Vexata

Vexata offers breakthrough enterprise storage solutions that enable transformative performance and scale from your database and analytics applications. With its Vexata Array family of solid state storage systems using NVMe Flash and now 3D XPoint™ SSDs, Vexata systems deploy simply and seamlessly into existing storage environments. Vexata was founded in December 2013 by a team of experienced entrepreneurs with a proven record of delivering meaningful innovation to the enterprise. Our investors include Intel Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Mayfield Fund and Redline Capital. Vexata’s All NVMe Arrays are in production and available at market leading economics. For more information, please visit www.vexata.com or email us at info@vexata.com

* Records set in all n-year high bid bandwidth benchmarks. Result of 36.8 GB/s set in the 5-year high bid bandwidth benchmark: STAC-M3.ß1.1T.5YRHIBID.MBPS. Records set in 10 of 15 volume-weighted average bid benchmarks in the Kanaga suite (STAC-M3.ß1.*.VWAB-12D.HO.TIME). Records set in the aggregated statistics benchmark (STAC-M3.ß1.10T.STATS-AGG.TIME) and all four benchmarks of statistics over unpredictable intervals (STAC-M3.ß1.*.STATS-UI.TIME). Detailed benchmark reports are available at www.STACresearch.com/news/2017/05/03/KDB170421

“STAC” and all STAC names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Securities Technology Analysis Center, LLC.