Zeptonics to Debut Lowest Latency Switch

Zeptonics, a new Sydney-based vendor, today announced production of ZeptoMux, a switching device with a latency of around 130 nanoseconds, which it claims is the fastest in the world. It is expected to hit the market by August.

Using an Endace 9.2X2 data acquisition and generation card, Zeptonics measured its latency at 130 nanoseconds in the client–upstream direction, and 123 nanoseconds in the upstream–client direction.

Founded and largely staffed by former quantitative traders and trading system developers, Zeptonics was conceived to solve problems encountered during the principals’ trading careers. It has promised further low-latency solutions to follow.

ZeptoMux was inspired by what founder Matt Hurd says was an overabundance of network switches with high flexibility but not enough low-latency potential. "When designing the ZeptoMux, our engineers stripped out all non-essential functionality and created a streamlined ‘race car' device to replace the broad-purpose ‘sports car' switches currently used by the industry,” Hurd says.

This was done by removing the content addressable memory (CAM) circuitry that allows any port on a switch to communicate with any other port. CAMs substantially affect latency. Without it, this 10GbE 23-to-1 multiplexing switch is optimized for trading applications.

"We remove the need for that, by building a switch in which one port can talk to any of the other 23 clients, and any of the 23 client ports can communicate with the one," says principal Dave Snowdon. "However, the 23 client ports cannot communicate with each other. This allows us to remove the CAM, and speed up the switch enormously. This n-to-1 structure is ideally suited to an exchange or broker's needs, where often this is the desired paradigm: An exchange wants to be able to communicate with JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs, but doesn't want them to be able to talk to each other through the exchange's network."

Because it is not a traditional n-to-n switch, Snowdon points out, it does not carry all of the features of a traditional switch.

ZeptoMux has been in development since June 2011, and Zeptonics has been working since December on manufacturing, reliability, testing, latency optimization and management interfaces. Next out of its lab will be the ZeptoLink, a 50-port layer 1 device with a latency of around five nanoseconds. This electronic patch panel can be used for broadcasting market data, publishing volatilities, reconfiguring connections and performing other time-critical tasks in the trading ecosystem.