AMD powers Optiver's modernisation of data centre for AI era

AMD has revealed that Optiver, a global market maker trading on over 100 financial exchanges, is utilising a comprehensive range of AMD's high-performance computing solutions to modernise its data centre. This move is part of Optiver's ongoing effort to enable a new era of computing and artificial intelligence (AI) within the financial markets.

In its announcement, AMD detailed Optiver’s use of multiple high-performance AMD products, including EPYC CPUs, Solarflare Ethernet adapters, Virtex FPGAs, and Alveo Accelerators. “We’re a team of researchers and engineers driven by a common vision: building systems that make financial markets better,” stated Alexander Itkin, U.S. chief technology officer at Optiver. “We are constantly pushing the limits, whether it’s challenging the speed of light to minimise latency or building world-leading computational scale. We need computing infrastructure that enables us to navigate the complexities of the capital markets in nanoseconds. For us, this is only possible with high-performance products from AMD, which help us successfully and continuously adapt to financial markets."

Optiver’s choice of AMD’s enterprise portfolio exemplifies the company's efforts to address various technical challenges prevalent in capital markets. The 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors are being implemented to support large-scale data analysis and to consolidate workloads as part of their data centre modernisation. The AMD Solarflare X2 series Ethernet network adapters are designed to offer low-level control of network interfaces, which in turn assists Optiver in scaling its systems to remain competitive in high-performance electronic trading environments.

The exponential growth of data in recent years has necessitated smart network and data centre solutions that surpass fixed-function silicon devices. AMD’s Virtex UltraScale+ VU23P FPGA delivers the required adaptability and data processing capabilities, ensuring Optiver's systems are always responsive yet flexible. Additionally, Optiver is leveraging the AMD Alveo U55C and Alveo UL3524 adaptable accelerator cards; the latter is noted for delivering up to a sevenfold improvement in latency over previous-generation FPGA technology.

“Our ultimate goal was to get faster access to data and information that is critical to meet the unique needs and workflows that the financial industry demands,” declared Kevin Sprague, U.S. hardware lead at Optiver. “The high-performance Alveo ultra-low latency cards are critical to helping us move more information, faster. Our collaboration with AMD helped us develop the products and features our industry demands. Additionally, our joint work has allowed us to expand and optimise our offering by leveraging not only AMD FPGAs, but also AMD EPYC CPUs to build out high-performance trading systems and infrastructure.”

Archana Vemulapalli, corporate vice president of Commercial Enterprise at AMD, highlighted, “AMD is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of commercial customers with a robust and diverse portfolio of compute engines that enable impressive performance and energy efficiency; two critical components of the modern data centre. Our work with Optiver is a great example of how we work together with customers to push the limits of what is possible, while demonstrating the capabilities of an AMD commercial solution and how it can address both present-day and future challenges for our customers.”