Linux Runs the Stock Exchange
Day trading is so passe. Today's sharp traders make their cash by trading milliseconds ahead of the other guy. To do that you need really fast stock exchanges, which is where Linux comes in.
The Deutsche Borse Group manages the International Securities Exchange, an equity options exchange in New York, as well as the Eurex and Deutsche Borse's own Xetra cash exchange. The Xetra stock exchange platform is also used by the Irish Stock Exchange, the European Energy Exchange, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange among others. It has long used Linux as the basis of these high-speed stock exchanges. Later this year, it is launching a next generation. The new trading infrastructure will use IBM WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging and Linux to make it the fastest stock exchange software on the planet.
How fast is it? A Deutsche Borse representative claimed that their Linux-powered exchange software can "easily execute more than a million trades per second, dwarfing even the mighty NY Stock Exchange."
