HP ProLiant BL280c Configuring the HP ProLiant Server BIOS for Low-Latency App - Page 4

Introduction Low-latency, deterministic system performance is a required system characteristic in the financial services market, where it enables high frequency trading, market data distribution, and exchange data processing. It is also required in defense and data acquisition applications for real-time signal and image processing. These systems must respond rapidly to external events in a predictable manner. They must do so under heavy workloads, sometimes reaching millions of transactions per second. To achieve this level of performance, system designers must consider the following factors during system design and configuration: • Hardware - System design, processor type and speed, memory capacity, network components • OS selection - Real-time operating system kernels specifically designed and tuned for minimum latency and real-time preemption • BIOS configuration - BIOS support configured for minimum latency and maximum performance • Networking fabric - Network technology (1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel) • Middleware - Messaging and database services on the network designed for minimum latency and maximum reliability • End-user applications - Designed to perform multicast messaging and RDMA • Physical distances - Physical separation between the information sources and clients affects overall system performance. This document presents suggestions and best practice recommendations on BIOS configuration, and on OS selection and tuning to obtain the best performance from HP ProLiant BL c-Class server blades and HP ProLiant DL, ML, and SL servers in the financial service market. IMPORTANT: The configuration changes described in this document apply only to systems with a low-latency OS kernel installed. Overall system throughput is not affected, whether or not the system management features are enabled. Introduction 4