Wall Street Virtually Guarded

NEW YORK -- Wall Street IT managers and CIOs discussed the challenges posed by virtualization and the next generation of multi-core processors at an event here today.

Keynote speaker Killian Murphy, director of R&D for Credit Suisse, explained that server virtualization is still in its early days. "It's a great way to drive up utilization of compute capacity," he said, though he wouldn't specify which vendors he works with.

Murphy also said there are some scalability issues he would like to see resolved. "As you put more virtual machines on these [physical] machines you need more memory -- you can share the CPU between a bunch of applications, but you can't share the [machine] memory," he said, urging chip and systems vendors to take care of this issue.

The exec also highlighted the need for improved hypervisor technology, which lets multiple operating systems run on a single piece of hardware. "We need as high performance an infrastructure as we can get," he explained, adding that he expects a big "leap forward" in hypervisor performance sometime soon.

Xen and VMware are the main players in this space, although a number of other vendors, such as IBM, have also focused their attention on hypervisors during recent months. (See Virtually Secure, XenSource Reveals Upgrade, and LeCroy Unveils Analyzer.)Another attendee at today's show agreed with Murphy's assessment. "The hypervisors are not fast enough," said Ric Wilmer, chief information security officer of consulting firm Wilmer Associates, adding that this has hindered the ability of Wall Street firms to do "real-time" data processing.

The consultant explained that, despite lots of activity from virtualization vendors recently, many users are still scratching their heads about the technology. (See VMware: The Virtualization Drag, iSCSI Gang Talks Big, ToutVirtual Offered With Microsoft, and FastScale Scopes Out Virtualization.) "The vendors aren't really giving an explanation of how virtualization helps - they just expect you to know what it is," said Wilmer.

Last week a report from the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) End User Council cited virtualization as a relatively immature technology. (See Users Blast Vendors in SNIA Survey.) Other users have also expressed security concerns and highlighted mixed results with server virtualization. (See Vendors Push Virtual Security and CA Cites Virtualization Challenges.)

Multi-core processors, were also high on the agenda today, with Murphy of Credit Suisse explaining that his firm already uses the technology for Monte Carlo simulations, a complex algorithm widely used in the finance industry.

The idea behind multi-core processors, which are sold by Intel and AMD among others, is that they can increase the amount of compute power available to users, although this comes at a skills premium.Unlike single-core processors, multi-core chips require knowledge of what is known as "parallelized" code, something which is making Murphy nervous. "There are 2,000 application developers in my organization alone -- we have a lot of people that have to learn this stuff," he said. "The interesting question for us on [Wall Street] is to what extent we have to start acquiring these capabilities."

Intel's director of multi-core software Sunil Saxena gave users a glimpse into his firm's multi-core roadmap during his keynote this morning.

With 6-core chips expected on the market this year, Intel is planning to unveil a family of 8-core processors, code-named "Nehalem" in 2008. This will be followed by two new platforms, "Westmere" and "Gesher" in 2009 and 2010.

— James Rogers, Senior Editor Byte and Switch