STAC-M3 Report: Additional benchmarks of kdb+ on IBM x3850 X5 & DS3524

New additions to benchmark suite test how kdb+ handles compute-intensive tasks and multi-user scaling. 4 April 2011 - New York STAC has released a second round of audited STAC-M3(TM) Benchmarks of Kx Systems' kdb+ 2.7 on the IBM System x3850 X5 server with IBM System Storage® DS3524. The report page also includes instructions on how to obtain the benchmark specifications used in this project, as well as the STAC-M3 Test Harness materials and the kdb+ code that were used. STAC-M3 is a suite of benchmarks for solutions that manage large tick-by-tick time series of financial data (i.e., tick databases). The solution stack in this report is the same one that we tested in an earlier report, but this time we used an updated suite of STAC-M3 Benchmarks (code named Antuco). The new suite retains the best I/O-intensive tests from the initial suite while adding compute-intensive tests modeled on equity research, post-trade reporting, and end-of-day tasks like NBBO calculation. This suite also provides more insight into multi-user scalability and goes further on the I/O front. The new benchmarks in the suite have been proposed by the trading firms and vendors in the STAC-M3 Working Group but have not yet been put to a vote of the full STAC Benchmark Council. Additional test specifications are also in development. Please contact council@STACresearch.com if you are interested in participating.