--There’s strong demand on Wall Street for real-time Linux, according to Tim Burke, director of emerging technologies at Red Hat. Real-time Linux is now available from Red Hat as well as Novell. “The real-time kernel provides low latency,” Burke says. “It provides kernel determinism, which ensures that the highest priority processes run first, like a high-speed lane on a highway.” For example, in a trading application, some pieces of the application are higher priority than others, namely receiving and processing requests and other network services. Less important functions, including logging and reporting, can be assigned lower priority. Applications don’t have to be modified to work with Red Hat’s real-time Linux kernel, Burke says.

--Wall Street firms are starting to invest in AMQP [Advanced Message Queuing Protocol Specification -- an emerging open specification for queue-based messaging], according to John O’Hara, distinguished engineer at JPMorgan Chase, who has been called the father of AMQP. “AMQP is the FIX transport for the next generation,” he says, noting that, “Wall Street cares about three things: performance first, determinism second and standards third.” AMQP, he believes, satisfies these needs.

--High performance computing will require a new set of developer skills, says Killian Murphy, director of research and development at Credit Suisse. Not only the ability to revise applications for multicore and multithreading, but the know-how to take advantage of new boards. “An interesting question for all of us on the Street is, to what extent do we need to get expertise in graphics processor units, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and other specialized boards?” he says. “The FPGA world is especially challenging, we don’t have silicon designers on staff.” He says the way these boards are packaged will be critical to their adoption on Wall Street.

--One challenge to open source adoption on Wall Street is the potential for patent infringement. “Every time we bring in an open source application, it has to go through legal twice, it’s a definite issue,” says Omer Soykan, senior vice president at Jefferies & Company. Another key consideration is support. “At the end of the day, the question is who is going to take care of problems,” Soykan says. Concurs Venu Pemmaraju, senior investment manager at Intel Capital, “Everybody wants one throat to choke, but nobody wants vendor lock-in.”