Server vs PC for trading

[CalTrader]

Quote from GeeTO69:

In other words, nitro, you don't know what you're doing ! lol

....
Or more probably he is working around some type of problem with the vendors design. Another possibility: this is a first iteration of the design. If you are working with system designed for your own - or company - use and its not for resale its OK to get a prototype working and optimize it or re-design it later if it initially meets your needs and makes you money.

FYI some of the stuff put forth by the major vendors - I wont name names - is at best of average quality and in many cases they represent poor designs. If you need to interface to their poorly thought out interfaces and systems then you often have no choice but to go with a non-optimal design.

 

[nitro]

I was comparing Windows 2003 Workstation vs Windows 2003 Sever.

You do not need a sever OS to run trading sofware that most people use.

nitro

Quote from SmoothTraderFX:

Well. it's not the same.
WindowsServer2003(NT5.2) Kernel is overwholed from XP(NT5.1).
I upgraded from XPpro, and the response has got obvisouly better.
There is not a desktop client version of NT5.2, and the next client OS is NT6.0-LongHorn.

Again, regrading the cost, to me, obtaining the developing the tool, and 10 licences of all OS version, it's pretty reasonalbe.
I have 3 PC at LAN, and can install the OS to each machine at that cost.

Smooth

 

[nitro]

Quote from CalTrader:

....
Or more probably he is working around some type of problem with the vendors design. Another possibility: this is a first iteration of the design. If you are working with system designed for your own - or company - use and its not for resale its OK to get a prototype working and optimize it or re-design it later if it initially meets your needs and makes you money.

FYI some of the stuff put forth by the major vendors - I wont name names - is at best of average quality and in many cases they represent poor designs. If you need to interface to their poorly thought out interfaces and systems then you often have no choice but to go with a non-optimal design.

You have it pretty accurately.

nitro

 

[nitro]

I see your design, and I have considered it.

Part of the problem is I need a more accurate tool than Task Manager. TM is telling me that I have about 40 threads right now. However, I believe that what it is reporting is the number of handles to threads, not necessarily the number of executing threads that are in the schedule queue. Many of those threads have been returned to the threadpool and are idle. That is a big difference.

FWIW, my application SMOKES. I am just trying to eek every last ounce of juice I can from my machine.

nitro

Quote from ArchAngel:

Understand your point about not holding the quote too long on the thread the datafeed's data distribution is operating on - that could slow down or lock up the datafeed processing due to data synchronization interlock.

Rather than 75 threads though, you could service the datafeed events on one thread, queue the data to a common queue and AST or event flag a processing thread to act on it. Use event driven processes on the action thread to keep processing flowing continually. Then the datafeed thread gets its own processor and your action thread gets its own and can just continually process data and events without excessive context switches. Doesn't even use fibres (which are essentially like threads but that have to be scheduled manually by the app). Use of fibres will NOT reduce context switching. To reduce context switching you need to condense what are now 75+ threads into fewer (maybe 1-2) asynchronous event driven execution streams.

 

[SmoothTraderFX]

Quote from nitro:

I was comparing Windows 2003 Workstation vs Windows 2003 Sever.

You do not need a sever OS to run trading sofware that most people use.

nitro

There is NO product from MS such as Windows2003 Workstation.
You must misunderstand looking at the link I posted.
That logo 'Windows2003 Workstation' must have been made by the guy using Photoshop etc.

Currently, there is no desktop/workstation version of NT5.2.
Hense, WindowsServer2003 is the only one for the latest good kernel. The reputation of the OS is so high.
Simply, it's very stable and ideal to use for trading platform, and I do need to run my trading application on the Server OS.

 

[CalTrader]

Quote from SmoothTraderFX:

There is NO product from MS such as Windows2003 Workstation.
You must misunderstand looking at the link I posted.
That logo 'Windows2003 Workstation' must have been made by the guy using Photoshop etc.

Currently, there is no desktop/workstation version of NT5.2.
Hense, WindowsServer2003 is the only one for the latest good kernel. The reputation of the OS is so high.
Simply, it's very stable and ideal to use for trading platform, and I do need to run my trading application on the Server OS.

The differences between windows 2000 and windows 2003 servers is really not worth talking about: there are just minor improvements.

 

[CalTrader]

Quote from nitro:

I... Part of the problem is I need a more accurate tool than Task Manager. TM is telling me that I have about 40 threads right now. However, I believe that what it is reporting is the number of handles to threads, not necessarily the number of executing threads that are in the schedule queue. Many of those threads have been returned to the threadpool and are idle. That is a big difference.

FWIW, my application SMOKES. I am just trying to eek every last ounce of juice I can from my machine.

nitro

www.systeminternals.com and more importantly, you need to instrument your application: these can be retrofitted. Use your own perf. counters to monitor the state of your app ...... Every server app we build is required to consider in advance which metrics need to be instrumented.

 

[nitro]

Quote from SmoothTraderFX:

There is NO product from MS such as Windows2003 Workstation.
You must misunderstand looking at the link I posted.
That logo 'Windows2003 Workstation' must have been made by the guy using Photoshop etc.

Currently, there is no desktop/workstation version of NT5.2.
Hense, WindowsServer2003 is the only one for the latest good kernel. The reputation of the OS is so high.
Simply, it's very stable and ideal to use for trading platform, and I do need to run my trading application on the Server OS.

Ah!

I did not know that! I have also not done any testing or seen any tests of 2003 Server vs 2000 Server. Do you have a link that shows the speed improvements?

nitro

 

[nitro]

Quote from CalTrader:

www.systeminternals.com and more importantly, you need to instrument your application: these can be retrofitted. Use your own perf. counters to monitor the state of your app ...... Every server app we build is required to consider in advance which metrics need to be instrumented.

Thanks for the link!

Very very interesting.

nitro