Handle NSE-mandated encryption in under 3 nanoseconds

Last year, we wrote about the upcoming NSE mandate requiring all exchange connections to be encrypted with AES-256. It’s part of a broader industry push for more security in financial markets and a significant change in the NSE market.

The original January 2024 deadline was pushed off until March. While it was a welcome relief for many market participants struggling with the full implementation of the encryption and all the related changes in their systems, our customers were ready with our AES IP core. We had successful deployments and production tests under our belt before the expected switchover date.

With the addition of encryption, the latency difference between hardware and software increases even further.

 We have used the extra time to continue optimizing our IP core for latency. The current version handles the whole encryption process in less than 3 nanoseconds. In some cases, it effectively adds no latency at all. This makes the addition of encryption almost inconsequential to the overall tick-to-trade latency when using the Magmio solution.

Even before, the FPGA-based trading systems had a clear latency advantage over software-based solutions. Now, with the addition of encryption, the latency difference between hardware and software increases even further.

What do you think, is it time to switch gears? Contact us to learn more about deploying FPGAs on NSE or other exchanges. We can offer the AES encryption as a standalone IP core or the complete Magmio solution.

PS: For those interested in ultra-low latency, we will soon release more details about the specialized AMD fintech accelerator we first mentioned last year.