World’s Leading Stock Exchanges Trust AMD Opteron™ Processors for their Mission-critical Trading Platforms


Story by Farid - Tuesday 12th June 2007, 12:12:00 AM


World’s Leading Stock Exchanges Trust AMD Opteron™ Processors for their Mission-critical Trading Platforms

— Billions of Stock Trade Transactions Conducted Daily by Exchanges in Canada, Europe and the United States on AMD64 Technology-based Servers —

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- June 12, 2007 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the Italian stock exchange, Borsa Italiana, is now among the many leading stock exchanges that depend upon AMD Opteron™ processor-based systems to conduct billions of stock trade transactions daily. Borsa Italiana has joined AMD’s growing roster of global exchange customers, including NYSE Group, Inc., the International Securities Exchange’s Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, Luxembourg Stock Exchange, Montréal Exchange and Philadelphia Stock Exchange. These customers rely on AMD Opteron processors to deliver competitive advantage through incomparable scalability, cost/performance and performance-per-watt.

“Stock exchanges represent some of the most challenging real-time transaction processing environments in the IT world,” said Kevin Knox, vice president, Worldwide Commercial Business, AMD. “AMD Opteron processors with AMD64 technology continue to be a platform of choice in this area because of their remarkable performance and performance-per-watt characteristics. Specifically, within the same or smaller footprint, AMD64 technology helps these exchanges process exceptional amounts of data and transactions quickly and reliably.”

With more than 200 years of securities trading experience, NYSE Euronext relies on innovative technology to provide a competitive advantage in order to maintain its industry leadership. As part of its powerful infrastructure, AMD Opteron processors are running the company’s mission-critical high-speed, low-latency applications on almost 500 servers.

“Trading over 2.3 billion shares daily valued at nearly $87 billion, NYSE Group exchanges require the industry’s most reliable and powerful technologies, which is why NYSE Euronext has made AMD Opteron processors a critical cornerstone of our IT strategy,” said Steve Rubinow, CTO, NYSE Euronext. “In the face of ever-increasing growth and customer requirements, the performance and reliability of AMD Opteron processors have helped us to continue our reign as a leading securities trader.”

Borsa Italiana recently migrated to AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant BL series BladeSystem servers. Since the implementation, the exchange has been able to increase server density by more than 100 percent; reduce air conditioning usage; and improve performance and efficiency all for a lower total cost of ownership. The company has been so happy with the solution that it plans to upgrade to AMD’s upcoming quad-core offering, code-named “Barcelona.”

“I am expecting further heat reduction and more performance with ‘Barcelona,’ even as our server stress loads increase,” said Alessandro Pelosi, IT director at the Italian stock exchange, Borsa Italiana. “The decision was easy, and Borsa Italiana should be ready to deal with any volume of traffic, well into the future.”

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange is another organization reaping the benefits of AMD Opteron processors. The company was searching for a powerful yet cost-effective solution that would deliver critical transactions per second (tps), while reducing energy consumption and server space in its crowded data center. The company migrated its largest trading interface and critical trading applications to 2-socket Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant® DL385 servers. The exchange also implemented a virtualization solution running VMware ESX Server on 4-socket Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant DL585 servers to power Web and Microsoft® Office applications.

“AMD is defying the laws of physics. Usual rules dictate that the faster the chip, the hotter the room and, therefore, more electricity is needed to keep the data center cool,” said Gene Peters, director, Information Services, Philadelphia Stock Exchange. “But with AMD64 technology, we are able to process nearly two-and-a-half times faster while reducing both space and energy costs.”

The AMD Opteron processor’s unique architecture makes it ideally suited for the high demands of international stock exchanges. AMD Opteron processors feature AMD’s Direct Connect Architecture, an integrated memory controller and HyperTransport™ technology, providing additional memory bandwidth, speed gains, low latency and superior scalability.

About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. AMD is dedicated to driving open innovation, choice and industry growth by delivering superior customer-centric solutions that empower consumers and businesses worldwide. For more information, visit www.amd.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. HyperTransport is a licensed trademark of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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