2007 has been an exciting year for technology developments impacting the financial services industry – from the first quad-core processors through to breaking the silicon barrier with 45 nanometer technology. The year has seen FSI take to the seas with our partners as part of Sail Intel – won by Capital Markets Technologies, host over 400 guests at fasterFS events on both sides of the Atlantic and launch new products to market that have taken the industry’s quest for speed and performance with energy saving and flexibility to the next level.

Gary Thall Financial Services Director US Intel

In this issue of Intelligence in Finance we are looking at some of the latest developments to affect the marketplace – from where we are post-MiFID and post-credit crunch to where technology is playing a part in hot areas such as risk analytics and the financial supply chain. We also take an in-depth look at our most recently launched technology - “Penryn”, the first hafnium-based, Intel 45nm Hi-K Intel® Xeon® and Intel® Core™2 Extreme quad-core processors to come to market. As the financial services industry increases workloads in the data center to keep up with the growing amounts of data, Penryn increases high-speed performance in the data center, enabling faster trades, faster data crunching and therefore a better view of risk positions, while reducing the overall average power draw.

The data center was one of many topics covered in our fasterFS series of events this year. We have held several successful seminars in both London and New York, covering a multitude of subjects, from how to participate in the low latency arms race to the application of regulatory developments such as the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) and Regulation National Market System (RegNMS).

Another key development for 2007 has been the launch of our Low Latency Lab in London, a facility offering financial institutions unique access to the very latest performance-enhancing technologies. Addressing the entire securities trade life cycle, the Lab has already helped several financial institutions optimize their trading infrastructures and evolve legacy applications to support increasing data and trade volumes.

On behalf of Intel, I would like to wish you all a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year. Intelligence in Finance will return in Q1 2008 and will contain all the news, events and technology updates from Intel and our friends in the financial services industry. To keep up-to-date with news and developments in the meantime, please visit our financial services industry web site at www.intelfasterfs.com

Filed under: Issue 4 - Winter 07