Thanks to Eric for his excellent introduction to Real-time Java. The video podcast of the meeting will be available on iTunes shortly.

JavaSIG-JavaRT-TradingDemo.pdf (Slides)

Abstract

Today's financial institutions use program trading systems to automatically execute split-second trades based on sophisticated algorithms that assess current market conditions. Trade decisions and execution must be made in a timely fashion to capitalize on the market. Missing a trade opportunity, even by a few seconds, can lead to significant losses.

With improvements in Java performance, firms are starting to use Java technology to implement these algorithms, and thereby realizing productivity gains over more traditional C/C++ development. However, in these time-critical systems, there is still no guarantee that, at any instant in time, the process will not be interrupted by the Java Garbage Collector, or other higher-priority processes. While trade execution occurs most of the time within an acceptable response time, every once in a while the trade execution is delayed due to garbage collection, or some other system event. This introduces unbounded risk that is often unacceptable.

Sun's implementation of the Real-Time Specification for Java (JSR-001), The Sun Java Real-Time System, enables real time processing through techniques that protect important threads from Garbage Collection and other system interrupts. This means that trading systems can confidently monitor the market and take action consistently within a calculated window of opportunity.

Presenter