Memory Feature Story

For financial institutions, fast processing of vast amounts of data is a key competitive differentiator. Whether it’s stock transactions or account reconciliation, fast results are imperative. And by adding more foreign exchange options or reconciling increasing amounts of end-of-the day trade data, financial applications are demanding more and more memory.  The Java™ platform uses memory called heap by creating and using objects on the fly. Once the objects are no longer needed, a process called garbage collection (GC) reclaims the memory for reuse. Traditional types of garbage collection must stop the application from running while the garbage is being collected. This causes what is often called “stop the world pauses,” where applications actually have to stop processing transactions all together.

In the highly competitive financial services industry, companies are constantly trying to gain an advantage over other institutions. An easy way to do this is to analyze more data objects, and as a result use more memory. However, more or larger objects mean more memory that will need to be garbage collected and consequently longer GC pauses. Java application performance tuning often revolves around this conundrum: how to use more data without increasing GC pauses. Applications that cannot achieve this balance decrease the amount of transactions that can be completed, thus diminishing revenue for the bank. Key questions to ask:

• Is your application consuming lots of CPUs?
  It probably needs more memory too.

• How often does your application sit idle collecting garbage?
  Increase productivity and your top line by processing hundreds of financial trades you could not do otherwise.

• Most hardware vendors recommend limiting heap size to 2GB.
  Imagine what your application design team can do with 100x more memory!

• How much time does your IT team spend tuning heap size?
  Take advantage of large amounts of available memory by deploying your applications as the designers intended and speed up application time to market.

The Azul Approach

Azul Compute Appliances are unique in that while making large heaps available, our patented hardware-assisted garbage collector dramatically reduces application pauses. And, applications will continue to run while the memory is being reclaimed for use by new objects, making sure that you can continue to generate revenue even during GC cycles.

Don’t get caught by other platforms with just lots of CPU; without a corresponding increase in memory, more CPUs alone will only lead to greater bottlenecks. With 100s of CPUs, 200GB heaps and no garbage collection pauses, the Azul Compute Appliances assure higher productivity and utilization. The end result means more transactions even during the highest volume trading periods.

Benefits of the Azul Compute Appliance Using Large Heaps for Financial Institutions:

• Analyze more data faster
• Increase revenue by increasing the number of transactions your application conducts in a fixed period of time
• Decrease the amount of time it takes to process your compliance data
• Keep up with high trade volume by processing more transactions even on the biggest trading days
• Increase your margins per trade by decreasing cost and increasing productivity
• Decrease the time to market for new applications

Contact us today at sales@azulsystems.com or call 650.230.6650 to learn how we can improve application response times and help grow your business.