Today Kx Systems announced that its time-series database kdb+ set new records in independent testing on the largest dataset ever used. Running on Dell EMC DSSD D5 Rack-Scale flash storage system with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, Kx and Dell EMC achieved the fastest results to date in 16 of the 19 benchmarks reported within the volume-scaled multi-year M3 benchmark suite as performed and audited by STAC (The Securities Technology Analysis Center). The STAC M3 test suite is designed to test the suitability and scalability of technology stacks for managing financial time-series data.

Trading firms in the STAC Benchmark Council designed the STAC-M3 suite to represent a range of performance challenges that are common in financial time-series analysis,” said Peter Lankford, Director of STAC. “As data volumes grow and as the query demands from quants, machines, and regulators increase, it is more important than ever for tick database solutions to perform well at scale. Kx’s kdb+, running on Dell EMC DSSD D5 and PowerEdge servers, has established performance records while testing on the largest STAC-M3 data scale so far.”

The STAC M3 test suite is designed to test scalability with respect to dataset size and the number of concurrent users. STAC tested and validated the performance with the biggest dataset ever used for testing: 48TB vs. just over 30TB that was previously tested.

With this benchmark, Kx set new performance records that were several times faster than most of the previous test results. Kdb+’s unique integrated architecture ensured that complex analytics performed during the benchmark on the 48 terabyte dataset could seamlessly draw on data both in-memory and on disk, as needed.

Glenn Wright, Systems Architect at Kx, said: “The results are a clear demonstration of the unparalleled speed of Kx when combined with advanced processing power. Clients choose Kx because of its ability to quickly analyze streaming, real-time and historical data. This benchmark further shows Kx’s ability to make the most of the latest equipment available.”

Kx has a large and firmly-established user base in financial markets, with nine of the 10 largest global banks as clients. Financial institutions, along with Kx’s growing numbers of clients in other industries, are using high-performance databases and applications built on kdb+ for rapid processing and analytics of large and growing datasets. Industries like telecommunications and areas such as sensor data analytics, network usage monitoring and energy trading, all greatly benefit from the record-breaking performance provided by running more complex analytics, on more data, faster, with a larger number of concurrent users.

Mark Sykes, Chief Operating Officer of Kx Systems, said: “We are really pleased with the results of this benchmark which demonstrate another avenue to further improve the performance of existing applications built on kdb+. Our financial services customers are always on the lookout for new architectures that combine low operational latencies and high data rates. At the same time, our customers need to store a massive amount of persistent data without compromising on performance metrics.”

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