Setting new expectations: Benchmarking high-performance trading with C3 machines

Trading in capital markets demands peak compute performance, with every microsecond impacting critical decisions and market outcomes. At Google Cloud, we’re committed to providing global markets with the cutting-edge infrastructure they need to create and participate in digital exchange ecosystems. Our industry investments enable a purpose-built, cloud-native market infrastructure solution leveraging a global network that was built for security and scale, data, and AI capabilities. At the same time, we’re building industry-specific innovations that offer performant, scalable, and resilient environments for exchanges and trading participants, ultimately transforming how they access markets, utilize data, and manage risk. 

Following our investments in optimized infrastructure for digital exchanges, we’ve continued to push the boundaries of what’s possible in cloud-based trading.

The general availability of our C3 and C4 machine series, powered by the latest Intel Xeon Scalable processors and our custom Titanium offload network investments, represents a significant leap forward for latency-sensitive trading applications. In addition, Citadel Securities recently joined us as part of our Cloud WAN layer 2 solution that enables point-to-point connections over Google’s proprietary global network and complements our existing Network Connectivity Center layer 3 solution. Together, these offerings help trading participants achieve low-latency compute and connectivity for their globally distributed trading infrastructure. 

Building on these foundational investments, we’re excited to announce new benchmarks specifically tailored for trading participants who require minimal latency and jitter with maximal throughput to handle the increasing market velocity of their trading infrastructures. In collaboration with 28Stone, a consultancy with expertise in capital markets technology and electronic trading solutions, we’ve tested and validated the performance of our C3 machine types to meet the needs of trading participants.  

28Stone’s published report highlights that Google Cloud can achieve a round-trip trading decision in less than 50 microseconds at P99 across a range of compute profiles.

“As a 24×7 digital exchange focused on delivering institutional exchange level consistency in the cloud, we are excited to see that Bullish’s participants can immediately leverage what 28Stone and Google Cloud have publicly demonstrated: the technical capabilities to rapidly spot opportunity and engage with confidence.” – Alan Fraser, VP of Platform & Operations, Bullish

The role of latency, jitter, and throughput

In today’s hyper-competitive electronic trading landscape, the performance of underlying technology infrastructure is not just a contributing factor to success — it’s fundamental. Three key performance metrics stand out for their impact on trading outcomes: latency, jitter, and throughput. 

Latency: the race 

In the context of trading, latency refers to the time it takes to receive, understand, and decide an action from a single datum. For trading systems, this means the time it takes for market data to reach the trading algorithm, for that algorithm to make a decision, and finally send a response back to the exchange. In a world of high-frequency trading (HFT) and algorithmic execution, single-microsecond delays can mean the difference between a profitable trade and a missed opportunity, a less favorable execution price, or getting filled on a resting order.

28Stone demonstrated latency for participants to make a straightforward trade decision — from receiving the ticks to processing a trade decision — of between 1.5µs and 3.5µs (P50 and P99, respectively) for normal replay speed of CME Group Equity market pcap files using open source Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) network acceleration. Additionally, they demonstrated similar latency profiles with data rates increasing by up to 100x.

Jitter: the quest for consistency 

Jitter refers to the variation in latency over time. While low latency is critical, high jitter — meaning unpredictable and inconsistent delays — can negatively impact trading performance. If the time it takes for an order to reach the exchange varies significantly, it becomes incredibly difficult to predict execution outcomes, manage risk, or implement trading strategies that rely on time certainty. If you were to use UberEats to order lunch but were told it would be delivered between 12 and 5pm, you would be unlikely to choose that option.  

28Stone demonstrated that participants can expect their experience in Google Cloud to be uniform, regardless of volatile market conditions. Google Cloud infrastructure delivers low jitter, allowing trading algorithms to operate with a higher degree of certainty, leading to more stable and reliable market mechanics – as well as profitability from good trading signals. 

As illustrated below for various C3 instance sizes using C++ with or without DPDK, the percentiles demonstrate strong consistent message performance. The increase in latency between each percentile demonstrates network and compute consistency measured in single and low tens of microseconds. The 28Stone report contains complete histograms for various configurations, allowing customers to see how to balance their specific latency and jitter requirements against the configurations’ cost profiles.

Throughput: handling the pressure of information

Throughput measures the amount of data that can be processed or transmitted within a given window of time (typically one second). In trading, throughput is a system’s capacity to handle large volumes of market data updates, process numerous events simultaneously, and aggregate trade events efficiently — especially during periods of high market volatility or peak trading hours. Insufficient throughput can lead to data queues, order rejections, increased risk exposure, and an inability to keep pace with market activity.

The C3 machine series leverages Google Cloud’s high-bandwidth networking capabilities, which include up to 200 Gbps per VM Tier 1 networking and services such as Cloud WAN. These machines are designed to provide the high throughput traders need to ingest vast streams of market data and execute on a large number of orders per second. The result is a trading system that performs optimally under strenuous load.

As highlighted, 28Stone tested increasingly higher replay speeds, resulting in higher bit rates that various trading systems may see in a variety of markets.

In summary, minimizing latency, reducing jitter, and maximizing throughput aren’t abstract technical pursuits but about consistency and certainty, akin to your lunch order arriving near your lunch break and not in the evening. Modern capital markets trading participants and digital exchanges demand these capabilities to enable market quality, fairness, and operational resilience. 

Embracing new market dynamics with cloud

Financial markets are in a perpetual state of flux, characterized by evolving regulations, a proliferation of new asset classes (including those that trade 24/7 like FX and digital assets), and sudden, sharp spikes in trading volumes. In this dynamic environment, the ability to scale infrastructure rapidly, operate with flexibility, and manage costs effectively is not just an advantage — it’s a prerequisite for survival and growth. 

With Google Cloud, exchanges and participants enjoy several benefits:  

• Elastic scalability: Automatically scale resources up or down based on real-time demand. This means that during unexpected volume spikes — driven by market news, geopolitical events, or algorithmic trading activity — trading infrastructure can dynamically access additional compute power to maintain optimal performance. When volumes normalize, resources can be scaled back down, so that firms only pay for what they use. 

• Flexibility for continuous trading: Cloud infrastructure provides the resilience and availability that continuous 24/7 trading requires, as demonstrated daily by critical workloads for global 24/7 industry platforms like air travel, retail banking, media, and retail. Google Cloud’s global network and multiple regions help ensure high uptime and fault tolerance, both critical for markets that never sleep. As seen with Deutsche Börse’s development of a digital asset trading platform on Google Cloud, the architecture is designed for 24/7 availability and can be rolled out quickly to new markets. Google Cloud’s continuous operations allow firms to capitalize on opportunities around the clock without the massive investment and operational overhead of maintaining private data centers with equivalent N+1 redundancy globally.

• Rapid engagement in new markets: Historically, expanding into new geographical markets or launching new asset classes involved lengthy and costly infrastructure build-outs. With Google Cloud’s global regions, firms can deploy trading infrastructure in new regions in a fraction of the time. This agility allows for rapid market entry, thereby enabling businesses to seize new revenue streams and diversify their business with lower upfront investment costs and risk. Quickly provisioning and de-provisioning resources also means firms can experiment with new market strategies more freely, knowing they are not locked into long-term hardware commitments.

Want to see it for yourself?

By harnessing the scale, flexibility, and compelling cost-to-performance ratio of Google Cloud, including the powerful C3 and C4 family instances, trading participants can transform market volatility from a threat into an opportunity. They can confidently handle volume surges, support round-the-clock trading, and swiftly enter new markets, all while maintaining tight control over their operational expenditure and maximizing their competitive edge.

Want to apply these capabilities to the announced CME Group market migration to Google Cloud? Register with Google Cloud for notifications and engagements.