Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 Vs Micromax Canvas Turbo: A Comparison

Tags: Samsung Group,  Samsung Galaxy Grand,  Samsung Galaxy Grand 2,  Micromax Mobiles,  Micormax Canvas Turbo,  Micormax Canvas

Samsung Group is the leading smartphone maker in the world having beaten the likes of Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia and LG in the race while Micromax is a rising phone maker of India and is only behind the South Korean company in the country in terms of the number of sales.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC) report for the Indian smartphone market for Q2 2013, Micromax with 22 percent of the market share is just behind Samsung which holds 26 percent.

While Samsung is sweeping the market with its Galaxy series, Micromax mobiles is not far behind with its series of affordable smartphones especially the Canvas series.

To take further charge of the market, the South Korean company has launched the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 while the Indian mobile company is putting up the fight with its Canvas Turbo.

Here is a brief specification comparison of the two smartphones.

DISPLAY:

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 features a 5.25-inch HD (720x1280) screen which is slightly bigger than Micromax Canvas Turbo's 5-inch HD (1080x1920) screen. However, Micromax wins it with a higher resolution and better pixel density of 441 pixels per inch (ppi) compared to Samsung's pixel density of 280 pixels per inch (ppi).

OPERATING SYSTEM:

Both the smartphones use Google's Android as the operating system - Galaxy Grand 2 features Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) while Canvas uses 4.2.1 (Jelly Bean) version. Samsung could have done better in this section considering the latest Android 4.4 KitKat version was already available in the market prior to its release.

On the other hand, there are reports that Micromax Canvas series is likely to get Android KitKat updates. Now, that is seriously some great news for fans.

PROCESSOR:

Micromax Canvas Turbo features a 1.5GHz MediaTek based quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM while the Galaxy Grand 2 features a 1.2GHz Cortex A7 quad-core processor with 1.5GB RAM.

MEMORY:

16GB of internal memory is what Micromax Canvas Turbo boasts of. However, the negative side is that, there is no microSD card slot for expansion of memory. On the other, Galaxy Grand 2 features an internal memory of 8GB which can be expanded to 64GB through a microSD card.

CAMERA:

In terms of mega pixel, it's hands down for Micromax Canvas Turbo which features a 13MP (4128 x 3096 pixels) back camera with LED Flash and can record full HD video of 1080p@30fps. It also features a 5MP front camera. On the other hand, Galaxy Grand 2 features an 8MP (3264 x 2448 pixels) back camera with LED flash, auto-focus and a 1.9MP front camera. It also records a full HD video of 1080p@30fps.

BATTERY:

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 runs on a Li-Ion 2600 mAh battery which, as per reports, gives a talktime of 17 hours on full charge and over 450 hours of standby on 2G. On the other hand, Canvas Turbo runs on 2000 mAh which gives a talk time of up to 7 hours and a standby time of 105 hours on 2G.

If reports of Grand 2's battery are true, it's hands down for the South Korean company in this section.

PRICE:

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 is officially priced between Rs 22990 to Rs 24990 and is all set to hit the market in January 2014. However, making the competition tougher, Micromax has priced its Canvas Turbo around Rs 18,000/.

LinkedIn, Pinterest more popular than Twitter

More US adults use LinkedIn and Pinterest than Twitter, but that website attracts a greater proportion of blacks and young adults than do its social media peers, a Pew Research Centre study released on Monday showed.
Photo pin-up site Pinterest spiked in popularity over the past year, according to the survey, a poll of 1,445 Internet users aged 18 and older. About 21% of respondents said they employ the service, up sharply from 15% in a similar survey conducted a year ago.
The figure was 22% for LinkedIn and 18% for Twitter, holding roughly steady from a year ago. About 29% of the blacks surveyed by Pew made use of Twitter, well above 16% for whites and Hispanics, the study showed.
Twitter ranks higher than Pinterest in terms of engagement, however: 46% of users surveyed go onto the online messaging service daily, versus 23% for Pinterest and just 13% for LinkedIn.
Industry experts have said Twitter is less intuitive than Facebook and thus can turn off users, curtailing its growth as a mainstream social media platform.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in October, 36% of 1,067 people who have joined Twitter say they do not use it, and 7% say they have shut their account. In contrast, only 7% of 2,449 Facebook members report not using the online social network, and 5% say they have shut down their account.
The Pew study polled users of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest - five of the largest US social media services.
About 71% of respondents said they used Facebook, up from 67% a year earlier and granting it the highest popularity ranking. But some analysts speculate that younger users are gravitating away from Facebook, the world's largest social network, and toward newer services such as SnapChat or Instagram.
"Facebook is the dominant social networking platform in the number of users, but a striking number of users are now diversifying onto other platforms," the Pew study read.
"Pinterest holds particular appeal to female users (women are four times as likely as men to be Pinterest users), and LinkedIn is especially popular among college graduates and Internet users in higher-income households." - Reuters

IBM System Networking RackSwitch G8124E_IBM Ultra Low latency Switches

IBM System Networking

RackSwitch G8124E

Ultra low-latency, high-performance

10 Gb top-of-rack switch

Highlights

●

●●●

Twenty-four SFP+ ports that operate at

10 Gigabit or 1 Gigabit Ethernet speeds

●

●●●

Optimal for high-performance computing

and applications requiring high bandwidth

and low latency

●

●●●

All ports are nonblocking 10 Gigabit

Ethernet with deterministic latency of

570 nanoseconds

●

●●●

IBM VMready helps reduce configuration

complexity and improves security levels in

virtualized environments

●

●●●

Virtual Fabric capability allows for the

carving up of a physical NIC into multiple

virtual NICs

The IBM® RackSwitch™ G8124E is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch

specifically designed for the data center, providing a virtualized,

cooler and easier network solution. The G8124E offers twenty-four

10 Gigabit Ethernet ports in a high-density, 1U footprint. Designed with

top performance in mind, the RackSwitch G8124E provides line-rate,

high-bandwidth switching, filtering and traffic queuing without delaying

data and large data-center grade buffers to keep traffic moving.

The G8124E is virtualized—providing rack-level virtualization of

networking interfaces. VMready software enables movement of virtual

machines—providing matching movement of VLAN assignments,

ACLs and other networking and security settings. VMready works

with all leading VM providers, such as VMware, KVM, Citrix, Xen,

IBM PowerVM® and Microsoft Hyper-V®. The G8124E also supports

Virtual Fabric, which allows for the carving up of a physical NIC into

2 - 8 virtual NICs (vNICs) and creates a virtual pipe between the adapter

and the switch (using the IBM Networking® OS) for improved performance, 

availability and security, while reducing cost and complexity.

The G8124E is cooler—implementing server-like directional cooling to

maximize data center layout and provisioning. Its superior airf low design

complements the hot-aisle and cold-aisle data center cooling model.

G8124E models come in either rear-to-front or front-to-rear airflow

models, allowing customers to design their data center based on their

hot- and cold-aisle implementation.

2

Data Sheet

IBM Systems and Technology

The G8124E is easier—with server

-oriented provisioning via

point-and-click management interfaces. Its industry standard

CLI, along with seamless interoperability, simplifies configura

-

tion for those familiar with Cisco environments.

The low latency offered by the G8124E makes it ideal for

latency-sensitive applications, such as high-performance

computing clusters and financial applications. The G8124E also

supports the newest protocols, including Converged Enhanced

Ethernet (CEE) and Data Center Bridging for support of

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and can be leveraged for

NAS or iSCSI.

IBM RackSwitch G8124E at a glance

Performance

100% line-rate performance

Ultralow latency of 570 nanoseconds

480 Gbps non-blocking switching throughput (full duplex)

Hardware features

Versions

System x

Power & Storage

Rear-to-Front (7309BR6)

Rear-to-Front (1455-24E)

Front-to-Rear (7309BF7)

DC Power (7309BD5)

Interface options

Twenty-four 10 G SFP+ fiber connectors

2 × 10/100/1000 Ethernet RJ45 and 1 mini-USB port for management

Dimensions

17.3" wide, 15" deep, 1U high

Weight

6.40 kg (14.08 lb)

Airflow

Front-to-rear or rear-to-front cooling. Variable speed fans automatically adjust as needed, helping to reduce energy

consumption.

Power

The AC-powered G8124E has dual load-sharing internal power modules, 50 - 60 Hz, 100 - 240 V AC auto-switching

per module.

The DC-powered G8124E has dual load-sharing internal -48 V DC power supplies, input voltage ranging from

42 V dc to 60 V dc per module.

The nominal power for AC or DC G8124E models ranges from 115 W to 168 W depending upon the speed of the port

(1 Gb/10 Gb), type of transceivers (SR or DAC) and number of active ports.

Warranty

3-year next business day advanced replacement with phone support and 3-year software upgrades.

Service upgrades and extensions available 

Financial traders turn to lasers for faster deals

High-frequency trading is replacing traditional methods

In the world of computerised financial trading, every second counts and superfast fibre-optic networks may no longer be quick enough.

Laser beam technology originally developed for the military is being rolled out to shave time off trades.
It will compete with new microwave networks that are increasingly being used by traders.
The company behind it, Anova, said it would be as fast as microwave networks and as reliable as fibre.
"There is more money being poured into this... space than at any time in its history," said chief executive Mike Persico.
The company has formed a joint venture with AOptix, which was founded by two California scientists who developed the laser technology for the US military to improve communication between fighter jets.
Initially the system, which combines lasers and wireless dishes, will be rolled out on short-range US and UK networks, with the first long-haul route between the UK and Germany being added later.
High-frequency trading (HFT) is driven by complex algorithms that allow traders to jump ahead of competitors by exploiting minute discrepancies in price on exchanges in different cities.
Market volatility In such trading, every millisecond counts and the competition to provide ever-faster trading networks is fierce.
The first microwave connection between London and Frankfurt was turned on last October by Perseus Telecom.

MICROWAVE TRADING NETWORKS

• Originally used in the 1970s for phone networks
• Microwave networks rely on dishes that are installed on buildings and mobile phone towers
• Signals can be disrupted by bad weather
• They have limited capacity

According to the company, the system cut about 40% off the time taken to complete a trade compared with traditional fibre-optic networks.

They cannot entirely replace fibre optics because the signal can be disrupted by bad weather and the network has limited capacity.
HFT in Europe is believed to account for nearly 40% of total equities trading, generating 6.7tn euros (£5.6tn) a year.
The method is controversial and has also been blamed for causing market volatilities, such as the notorious flash crash in May 2010 that wiped 10% off the value of the stock market in minutes.
Increasingly regulators are looking at ways to bring in tougher rules for such trading.
Other technologies that may be used in future to help make trades even faster include the use of drones as platforms for wireless links.

Top & Best Websites to Download Hindi Songs Legally

The online world is full of websites allowing the download of Hindi songs for free. Most of these are however not legal as you can not let someone download for free that is sold for a certain price in the market.

Again these illegal sites are full of pop-ups, malware, and adware that subject your computer towards danger. In other words, you are exposing your data to be ripped by hackers.

Downloading free music all mean that the monetary benefits that is the right of the maker is snatched away. The Indian Music Association is very much helpless in this regard because the servers which actually store this song are elsewhere outside India.

However, there are many other sites that let you download Bollywood songs legally too.

Below is the list of some of the top sites from where you can easily download music to your computer, Ipod or cell phone once you buy the songs. The list is also DRM free.

1. Flipkart.com

Flipkart have come a long way since its inception as a book selling website. Today they have included mp3 downloads as well. You can download songs directly to your PC or phone from this site. They have songs from most of the Indian languages. New albums are priced as about 80-100 INR, individual songs are listed at 6 INR and the older ones cost as low as 20 INR.

These albums are re-downloaded and gets stored in your music library once it is downloaded to your system.

2. Saregama.com

Sa re ga ma is a large music company holding the rights of many Hindi songs. You may download any song from this site at a reasonable price.

3. Raaga.com

Raaga also deals with a hefty collection of songs allowing users to download it at a very low price of about 12 INR or .99 USD. Not only Hindi songs, it also stores a good collection of Bengali, Tamil and Bhojpuri songs in its list. It is the first Indian website to give downloads on the internet.

4. Hungama.com

Hungama.com includes a big collection of songs, videos, ringtones and lot more, downloadable at a good price. Hungama.com also has the provision of monthly subscription where you can download songs (complete album) in as low as 150 INR.

5. Amazon.com

Amazon.com is mostly for NRIs located outside India. It has a huge collection of Hindi songs from the latest movies being uploaded instantly. They also archive a good source for old songs too.

There also several websites that offers listening songs for free. Raaga.com also allows free streaming of songs.

However, if you do not want to spend on downloading, you may always listen to song online for free. A free of the sites that allow this are:

• Raaga.com
• In.com
• Saavn.com
• Google.co.in/music
• Dhingana.com

A lot of pain and hard work goes behind the production process of music. Therefore, support the music industry by downloading Hindi songs legally.

Des: Here are the top sites where you can listen/download your favorite Indian song legally. Listen to the songs online for free and if you like it, buy it on

Search Topic:

• Hindi Song Downloading Site
• download hindi songs legally
• best hindi song site for free download
• indias top legal website for downloading song
• Legal hindi songs websites
• www hindi news crazy download
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• Legal website to download hindi songs
• Indias best hindi songs

When Nanoseconds matter, Dell delivers with Dell Processor Acceleration Technology

When Nanoseconds matter, Dell delivers with Dell Processor Acceleration Technology

Dell Processor Acceleration Technology is a unique-to-Dell innovation that enables High Frequency Trading customers to increase their processor performance (frequency) from 13 to 31 percent while drastically reducing jitter in their applications.
The demand for this technology was fueled by a need we were hearing from our algorithmic trading customers, who have a unique set of requirements for their business environments. Now, by using Dell Processor Acceleration Technology, these customers can get more performance out of their Dell solutions. In Dell external beta testing of this new capability, one IT Director in  Chicago at a large algorithmic trading firm reported an improvement in its application performance by  approximately 10 percent over the previous test unit – just by updating the existing server to the new firmware.
Dell latest patent-pending enterprise advancement meets our customers’ requirements and unleashes the potential of current select PowerEdge 12th generation servers.
"The Dell Processor Acceleration Technology is a double win,” said Peter Harris, president of A-Team Group Americas. “It not only provides the kind of performance boost required to underpin more profitable algorithmic trading, but it is also fast and easy to install on existing server hardware, allowing trading firms to leverage it without costly and time consuming hardware upgrades and software code changes."
This dramatic improvement is surprisingly easy to implement and use. Any existing customer around the world with a PowerEdge R620, R720 or R720xd with the Intel E5-2690 processor can just download a BIOS update, at no additional cost, and apply it like any other standard Dell update, with no restrictions to the run time of the server or any reduction in the warranty. This solution is designed to work with all supported operating systems for PowerEdge 12th generation servers and also supports Dell’s agent-free OpenManage Essentials monitoring solutions. Customers may also pre-install other high performance components to the servers from the factory in tandem with this technology, including low latency network cards, high performance memory, and hot swappable front facing PCIe SSD storage for a truly complete low-latency solution from Dell.

Top & Best Websites to Download Hindi Songs Legally

The online world is full of websites allowing the download of Hindi songs for free. Most of these are however not legal as you can not let someone download for free that is sold for a certain price in the market.

Again these illegal sites are full of pop-ups, malware, and adware that subject your computer towards danger. In other words, you are exposing your data to be ripped by hackers.

Downloading free music all mean that the monetary benefits that is the right of the maker is snatched away. The Indian Music Association is very much helpless in this regard because the servers which actually store this song are elsewhere outside India.

However, there are many other sites that let you download Bollywood songs legally too.

Below is the list of some of the top sites from where you can easily download music to your computer, Ipod or cell phone once you buy the songs. The list is also DRM free.

1. Flipkart.com

Flipkart have come a long way since its inception as a book selling website. Today they have included mp3 downloads as well. You can download songs directly to your PC or phone from this site. They have songs from most of the Indian languages. New albums are priced as about 80-100 INR, individual songs are listed at 6 INR and the older ones cost as low as 20 INR.

These albums are re-downloaded and gets stored in your music library once it is downloaded to your system.

2. Saregama.com

Sa re ga ma is a large music company holding the rights of many Hindi songs. You may download any song from this site at a reasonable price.

3. Raaga.com

Raaga also deals with a hefty collection of songs allowing users to download it at a very low price of about 12 INR or .99 USD. Not only Hindi songs, it also stores a good collection of Bengali, Tamil and Bhojpuri songs in its list. It is the first Indian website to give downloads on the internet.

4. Hungama.com

Hungama.com includes a big collection of songs, videos, ringtones and lot more, downloadable at a good price. Hungama.com also has the provision of monthly subscription where you can download songs (complete album) in as low as 150 INR.

5. Amazon.com

Amazon.com is mostly for NRIs located outside India. It has a huge collection of Hindi songs from the latest movies being uploaded instantly. They also archive a good source for old songs too.

There also several websites that offers listening songs for free. Raaga.com also allows free streaming of songs.

However, if you do not want to spend on downloading, you may always listen to song online for free. A free of the sites that allow this are:

• Raaga.com
• In.com
• Saavn.com
• Google.co.in/music
• Dhingana.com

A lot of pain and hard work goes behind the production process of music. Therefore, support the music industry by downloading Hindi songs legally.

Des: Here are the top sites where you can listen/download your favorite Indian song legally. Listen to the songs online for free and if you like it, buy it on

Search Topic:

• Hindi Song Downloading Site
• download hindi songs legally
• best hindi song site for free download
• indias top legal website for downloading song
• Legal hindi songs websites
• www hindi news crazy download
• legal site for Hindi song download
• legal sites in india for buying music online
• Legal website to download hindi songs
• Indias best hindi songs

Dell Accelerates Servers For High Frequency Algo Trading - Dell Processor Acceleration Technology PAT

Dell Accelerates Servers For High Frequency Algo Trading

Dell has developed a speed edge for high frequency traders (HFT). The computer company has created firmware, the Dell Processor Acceleration Technology, for several of its high end Intel-based servers. It allows users to increase the speed of PowerEdge R620, R720 and R720xd servers with the Intel E5-2690 processor by 13 to 31 percent just through downloading a free BIOS update.
The Dell servers run on the latest Intel eight-core processors which have a provision to go to turbo mode when that’s required to handle high volumes of work. Moving in and out of turbo mode, however, creates jitter, something that traders want to avoid. Dell’s proprietary technology, which the company plans to patent, turns off seven of the cores and locks the remaining processor into turbo mode running at 3.8 GHz with access to all the cache on the processor.
“We can lock it into that clock speed to minimize jitter and it is fully warranted for three years, can run 24×7 and costs no more than a standard server,” said Bob Barris, vice president of sales at Dell.
This solution is designed to work with all supported operating systems for PowerEdge 12th generation servers and also supports Dell’s agent-free OpenManage Essentials monitoring solutions. Customers may also pre-install other high performance components to the servers from the factory, including low latency network cards, high performance memory, and hot swappable front-facing PCIe SSD storage.
The company said that an IT Director at a large algorithmic trading firm in Chicago reported an improvement in its application performance by approximately 10 percent over the previous test unit – just by updating the existing server to the new firmware.
Dell’s previous effort at high speed servers, the 710, ran on a six-core Everest processor operating at 3.4 GHz. Intel turned off most of the cores to increase the speed to 4.3 GHz, although the processor was commonly referred to as a 5 GHz chip. The processor threw off a lot of heat, could be used for only 12 hours a day, cost two to three times as much as a standard server because it was produced in small numbers, and had an Intel processor warranty of just one year. When I looked around for users a year ago I could find only one New York trading firm and they weren’t willing to talk. Dell’s new approach is much more mainstream but provides a significant speed improvement that gives high frequency traders an edge.
Coming from Dell whose dull gray commodity computers were probably a major impetus behind the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement by users who wanted something more attractive to work on, is something of a surprise, but Barris says Dell is an HFT powerhouse.
“We have been an arms dealer to the HFT space for years,” Barris said. “When we get a hard look at our technology in comparison to benchmarks, we tend to win more than we lose. We always lose when nobody looks at us,” he added, in tacit admission that the Dell brand doesn’t necessarily spring to mind when companies are looking for the latest and greatest tech.
In reality, he added, Dell is usually first to market with the latest Intel processors, often months ahead of its competition. Dell plans to run the new servers and BIO upgrade through STAC, the financial services industry benchmarking test firm.
“For the last several years we have focused on the HFT space. It’s not a lot of units but it is a profitable market and they buy the leading technology. About two years ago we were the first, and maybe the only, OEM with the Intel Everest chip.” Dell must be hoping this new approach leads to larger sales than Everest; one computer magazine estimated each Everest chip cost around $10,000, making them the most expensive x86 processors ever.

How lasers will make financial trading even faster

Much of the financial trading on Wall Street and around the world is done by computers, not humans.
With high-frequency trading, firms use complex algorithms to exploit price discrepancies in the stock market. All of this trading happens in a flash, microseconds. (Radiolab has a good episode explaining this financial trading phenomenon.) Dealing in microseconds means companies need to have the fastest technology to complete their transactions. Superfast fiber-optic networks were the hot technology, then microwave networks came along, and now: lasers?
That's the vision of the two companies Anova and AOptix. The companies say a laser network, built from technology developed by the U.S. military to improve communication between jets, would be as fast as microwave networks and as reliable as fiber-optic networks. As BBC reports:

Initially the system, which combines lasers and wireless dishes, will be rolled out on short-range US and UK networks, with the first long-haul route between the UK and Germany being added later.

Shaving microseconds off trades has become like an arms race for trading firms. Meanwhile, the public looks on weary as incidents, like the AP hoax, can briefly cause the U.S. stock market to plunge before recovering minutes later. But unless government regulators slow down high frequency trading, the trades will only get faster; lasers certainly won't be the summit.

Financial traders turn to lasers for faster deals

High-frequency trading is replacing traditional methods

In the world of computerised financial trading, every second counts and superfast fibre-optic networks may no longer be quick enough.

Laser beam technology originally developed for the military is being rolled out to shave time off trades.
It will compete with new microwave networks that are increasingly being used by traders.
The company behind it, Anova, said it would be as fast as microwave networks and as reliable as fibre.
"There is more money being poured into this... space than at any time in its history," said chief executive Mike Persico.
The company has formed a joint venture with AOptix, which was founded by two California scientists who developed the laser technology for the US military to improve communication between fighter jets.
Initially the system, which combines lasers and wireless dishes, will be rolled out on short-range US and UK networks, with the first long-haul route between the UK and Germany being added later.
High-frequency trading (HFT) is driven by complex algorithms that allow traders to jump ahead of competitors by exploiting minute discrepancies in price on exchanges in different cities.
Market volatility In such trading, every millisecond counts and the competition to provide ever-faster trading networks is fierce.
The first microwave connection between London and Frankfurt was turned on last October by Perseus Telecom.

MICROWAVE TRADING NETWORKS

• Originally used in the 1970s for phone networks
• Microwave networks rely on dishes that are installed on buildings and mobile phone towers
• Signals can be disrupted by bad weather
• They have limited capacity

According to the company, the system cut about 40% off the time taken to complete a trade compared with traditional fibre-optic networks.

They cannot entirely replace fibre optics because the signal can be disrupted by bad weather and the network has limited capacity.
HFT in Europe is believed to account for nearly 40% of total equities trading, generating 6.7tn euros (£5.6tn) a year.
The method is controversial and has also been blamed for causing market volatilities, such as the notorious flash crash in May 2010 that wiped 10% off the value of the stock market in minutes.
Increasingly regulators are looking at ways to bring in tougher rules for such trading.
Other technologies that may be used in future to help make trades even faster include the use of drones as platforms for wireless links.

High-frequency stock traders turn to laser networks, to make yet more money

High-frequency stock traders turn to laser networks, to make yet more money

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If you thought that stock traders made enough money, and wielded enough power over the global economy, think again: Financial traders are now turning to high-speed laser networks between stock exchanges, to decrease latency by a few milliseconds, to squeeze a few more trillion dollars per year out of high-frequency trading (HFT).
If you haven’t heard of high-frequency trading before, it’s essentially the automated, algorithmic buying and selling stocks. HFT is performed by computer systems that are attached directly to stock exchanges. These HFT computers are armed with algorithms devised by the finest brains in the world (really), which constantly scan the market for securities (stocks) that can be bought low on one exchange, and sold high on another exchange, usually netting just a fraction of a cent per trade. Do this thousands or millions of times per day, though, and HFT can make a lot of money. Furthermore, by improving the speed and accuracy of the algorithm, traders can make billions — by having a lower-latency link to the stock exchange than their competitors, a financial firm can make trillions.
Which leads us neatly onto low-latency network links. Over the last decade or so, as HFT has become the predominant way of trading stocks, the focus has been on low-latency fiber-optic links between exchanges. As we covered last year, there are currently three cables being laid between the London and Tokyo, which will reduce the latency from 230ms to 170ms — at a cost of $1.5 billion. There is also the Hibernia Express trans-Atlantic cable, which will cut the round trip between New York and London by six milliseconds (to ~59ms), at a cost of $300 million. While the added redundancy of these new links is nice, the biggest customers are expected to be financial traders who stand to make millions from the lower latencies.
There’s a new network topology craze, though, that can drop the latency even further than fiber optics: Free-space microwave networks, and soon free-space laser links. Perseus Telecom recently completed a microwave link between London and Frankfurt that reduced the round-trip latency to just 4.6 milliseconds — almost halving the 8.35-millisecond round-trip for the London-Frankfurt fiber link. Perseus’ network is essentially a series of microwave dishes strapped to towers (pictured right), forming as straight a line as possible between London and Frankfurt. By cutting the distance traveled, and not having to jump through possibly-congested routers, latency drops dramatically.
The microwave network cost between $13 and $26 million to build, but for the financial trader who uses it could earn billions. Curiously, though, we only know about Perseus’ microwave network in the first place because a competitor launched a rival link in February; in the world of HFT, where financiers can win or lose depending on their link latency, secrecy is key. It’s also worth noting that microwave networks are fairly old hat: Telecom companies have used microwave links between cell towers and phone exchanges for decades — but because they’re affected by weather, and they have low capacity, they’ve been phased out in favor of fiber-optic links. It is because of these inherent weaknesses that HFT can’t rely solely on microwave links: It would be a most unsatisfactory if a bit of drizzle in London halted trading.
Which is where lasers come in. According to AOptix, its laser network technology has the reliability and capacity of fiber optic networks, and the low latency of microwave networks. AOptix started off as a US defense contractor, creating a laser-based system that allows for 10Gbps air-to-ground networks over a distance of 200 kilometers (124 mi). Now it wants to bring this technology to the consumer market, supercharging mobile backhaul links (connecting carrier towers to each other, and to the main backbone) and financial trading. By combining adaptive optics and beam steering (to account for swaying towers), AOptix says its laser links work in all weather conditions. AOptix hopes to roll out some short-range laser links in the US and UK, and then follow up with a London-Frankfurt laser link in the future.
What about longer wireless links, though? If London-New York could have its latency halved like London-Frankfurt, it would be a revelation in high-frequency trading. Mike Persico, CEO of Anova — AOptix’s partner in the venture — says that barges or drones might be used to create a cross-Atlantic laser network. Drones with high-powered lasers. What could possibly go wrong?

Stem Cell Treatment.. A RAY OF HOPE for all kinds of ailments

Next steps in potential stem cell therapy for diabetes
UC San Diego-based study looks at differentiation of hESCs in endocrine cell progression




Type 1 and type 2 diabetes results when beta cells in the pancreas fail to produce enough insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar. One approach to treating diabetes is to stimulate regeneration of new beta cells.

There are currently two ways of generating endocrine cells (cell types, such as beta cells, that secrete hormones) from human embryonic stem cells, or hESCs: either generating the cells in vitro in culture or transplanting immature endocrine cell precursors into mice.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, collaborating with scientists from San Diego-based biotech company ViaCyte, Inc., looked at the differences and similarities between these two types of hESC-derived endocrine cell populations and primary human endocrine cells, with the longer-term goal of developing new stem cell therapies for diabetes.

The results of their study will be published on line January 10, in advance of the February 7 print edition of the journal Cell Stem Cell.

The scientists compared gene expression and chromatin architecture – the structure of combined DNA and proteins that make up the nucleus of the cell, in which dynamic remodeling occurs at various stages of differentiation – in both primary human endocrine cells and hESC-derived cells.

"We found that the endocrine cells retrieved from transplanted mice are remarkably similar to primary human endocrine cells," said principal investigator Maike Sander, MD, professor of pediatrics and cellular and molecular medicine, and director of UC San Diego's Pediatric Diabetes Research Center. "This shows that hESCs can differentiate into endocrine cells that are almost indistinguishable from their primary human counterparts."

However, the researchers observed that endocrine cells produced in vitro lack features of primary endocrine cells and fail to express the majority of genes that are critical for endocrine cell function. Consistent with this finding, these cells are not able to reverse diabetes in diabetic animal models.

Sander explained that one way to move forward with cell replacement therapies for diabetes is to transplant the endocrine precursor cells into humans and let the cells mature in the patient as they do in mice. "However, we don't currently know whether the maturation process will occur in humans in the same way."

She added that an alternative approach is to generate fully functional endocrine cells in the culture dish and to then transplant these cells into humans. While such a method of generating functional endocrine cells in the dish does not yet exist, this study provides hints about the steps currently missing in in vitro differentiation protocols.

Sander and colleagues identified a key mechanism for the induction of developmental regulators –removal of a family of proteins that can remodel chromatin called the Polycomb group (PcG). Reinstating PcG-dependent repression silenced the expression of genes that are only temporarily activated, and need to be turned off in order for cells to progress to their final differentiated endocrine state. When endocrine cells were produced in the culture dish, the researchers found that PcG-mediated repression was not fully eliminated, probably contributing to the cells' malfunction.

"This information will help devise protocols to generate functional insulin-producing beta cells in vitro," said Sander. "This will be important not only for cell therapies, but also for identifying disease mechanisms that underlie the pathogenesis of diabetes."

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Thanks & regards
Rohit Kumar ‎

How the Robots Lost: High-Frequency Trading's Rise and Fall

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San Francisco design firm Stamen teamed up with Nasdaq to visualize the frenzy of automated trading. This is one minute of bids and offers on March 8, 2011

Steve Swanson was a typical 21-year-old computer nerd with a very atypical job. It was the summer of 1989, and he’d just earned a math degree from the College of Charleston. He tended toward T-shirts and flip-flops and liked Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also spent most of his time in the garage of his college statistics professor, Jim Hawkes, programming algorithms for what would become the world’s first high-frequency trading firm, Automated Trading Desk. Hawkes had hit on an idea to make money on the stock market using predictive formulas designed by his friend David Whitcomb, who taught finance at Rutgers University. It was Swanson’s job to turn Whitcomb’s formulas into computer code. By tapping market data beamed in through a satellite dish bolted to the roof of Hawkes’s garage, the system could predict stock prices 30 to 60 seconds into the future and automatically jump in and out of trades. They named it BORG, which stood for Brokered Order Routing Gateway. It was also a reference to the evil alien race in Star Trek that absorbed entire species into its cybernetic hive mind.

Among the BORG’s first prey were the market makers on the floors of the exchanges who manually posted offers to buy and sell stocks with handwritten tickets. Not only did ATD have a better idea of where prices were headed, it executed trades within one second—a snail’s pace by today’s standards, but far faster than what anyone else was doing then. Whenever a stock’s price changed, ATD’s computers would trade on the offers humans had entered in the exchange’s order book before they could adjust them, and then moments later either buy or sell the shares back to them at the correct price. Bernie Madoff’s firm was then Nasdaq’s (NDAQ) largest market maker. “Madoff hated us,” says Whitcomb. “We ate his lunch in those days.” On average, ATD made less than a penny on every share it traded, but it was trading hundreds of millions of shares a day. Eventually the firm moved out of Hawkes’s garage and into a $36 million modernist campus on the swampy outskirts of Charleston, S.C., some 650 miles from Wall Street.
By 2006 the firm traded between 700 million and 800 million shares a day, accounting for upwards of 9 percent of all stock market volume in the U.S. And it wasn’t alone anymore. A handful of other big electronic trading firms such as Getco, Knight Capital Group, and Citadel were on the scene, having grown out of the trading floors of the mercantile and futures exchanges in Chicago and the stock exchanges in New York. High-frequency trading was becoming more pervasive.

The definition of HFT varies, depending on whom you ask. Essentially, it’s the use of automated strategies to churn through large volumes of orders in fractions of seconds. Some firms can trade in microseconds. (Usually, these shops are trading for themselves rather than clients.) And HFT isn’t just for stocks: Speed traders have made inroads in futures, fixed income, and foreign currencies. Options, not so much.
Back in 2007, traditional trading firms were rushing to automate. That year, Citigroup (C) bought ATD for $680 million. Swanson, then 40, was named head of Citi’s entire electronic stock trading operation and charged with integrating ATD’s systems into the bank globally.
By 2010, HFT accounted for more than 60 percent of all U.S. equity volume and seemed positioned to swallow the rest. Swanson, tired of Citi’s bureaucracy, left, and in mid-2011 opened his own HFT firm. The private equity firm Technology Crossover Ventures gave him tens of millions to open a trading shop, which he called Eladian Partners. If things went well, TCV would kick in another multimillion-dollar round in 2012. But things didn’t go well.


For the first time since its inception, high-frequency trading, the bogey machine of the markets, is in retreat. According to estimates from Rosenblatt Securities, as much as two-thirds of all stock trades in the U.S. from 2008 to 2011 were executed by high-frequency firms; today it’s about half. In 2009, high-frequency traders moved about 3.25 billion shares a day. In 2012, it was 1.6 billion a day. Speed traders aren’t just trading fewer shares, they’re making less money on each trade. Average profits have fallen from about a tenth of a penny per share to a twentieth of a penny.

High-frequency trading: Business gets tough for Wall Street gunslingers

The prospects of a return to the good old days continue to fade for Wall Street’s fastest gunslingers. These are the trading firms that dart in and out of shares at rapid-fire speeds using sophisticated technology to make fractions of a penny.

Nearly five years have passed since cumulative profits peaked for high-frequency trading (HFT) companies that buy and sell stocks at millisecond speeds on the US market, according to industry estimates.

As competition has stiffened between those that survived the downturn, the conditions that allow companies to thrive have deteriorated since HFT’s most profitable days.
Optimism that daily US trading volumes will return to pre-crisis levels has faded, as have the frantic bursts in volatility that send shares in diverging directions, creating the opportunities that lured so many entrants into HFT.
“It’s been a tough market. High-frequency trading companies are struggling [to cope with] a lack of volatility and trading volume, competition and a cost structure that continues to go up,” says Larry Tabb, founder of the consultancy Tabb Group.

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“The ability to generate returns, especially in the US equity market, is pretty challenged. They are moving overseas and into other asset classes,” he adds.

The maturing of the US equity market as far as HFT was concerned was confirmed this year as Getco, one of the largest and most prominent companies to emerge from the HFT boom in the last decade, revealed a multiyear slowdown in its proprietary trading business.

The company, known just a few years ago for its relentless investment in the technology and knowhow to beat other speed traders, decided it would move in a different direction.

It acquired in December Knight Capital, known for its client-facing trading business, for $1.8bn.

“Getco and firms like Getco that grew out of the electronification of the markets in the first decade of the century also grew with an explosion of volume and volatility,” says Daniel Coleman, who led Getco and is chief executive of KCG, the combined company that formed following the acquisition of Knight.
Mr Coleman says the company’s backers realised that opportunities to prosper in HFT relied on a competitive technological position – which was expensive to maintain – and favourable market conditions.
KCG will instead concentrate on applying the once-secretive trading techniques and technologies it used for Getco’s own accounts to help clients execute trades.
Jamie Selway, head of liquidity management at brokerage ITG, says: “Firms like Getco were very much one-trick ponies with highly visible strategies that relied on incredibly high volumes to bring in incredibly low return. Their day has come and gone.”
While KCG insists it is not turning its back on proprietary trading, the industry appears to be heading toward consolidation as companies find the climate difficult to navigate.
Allston Trading and RGM Advisors, two leading high-frequency trading companies, were reported to be discussing a tie-up in June.
Those that intend to battle through the difficult conditions in the US equity market must contend with the constant cost of upgrading expensive infrastructure and freshening up their trading strategies to stay ahead of the pack. The HFT companies must fight to keep top engineers and programmers from being poached by rivals and the broader trading industry, which has spent heavily to become more sophisticated.
“The techniques that HFT shops are using are not exclusive to them any more,” says Joshua Walsky, chief technology officer at Broadway Technology, which provides software to trading companies. “If a traditional bank is using those techniques, they are essentially competing.”
He adds that companies must factor in the cost of trading errors that can amass rapidly because of a glitch or problem with a computer system, such as that which caused Knight to lose $460m in a matter of minutes in August 2012 and led to its takeover by Getco.

Goldman Sachs inadvertently accumulated hundreds of thousands of options contracts last month.

Mr Walsky says: “The industry is seeing that there is a real cost to [making] errors, which we call system risk.”
Meanwhile, companies such as Virtu Financial, which have spent heavily to push into new markets and asset classes, have emerged as the leaders of the industry.
The consolidation and geographic expansion is not expected to have any significant impact on the highly fragmented nature of the US equity market, which has grown to 13 exchanges and dozens of alternative trading platforms, to accommodate speed traders.
Mr Tabb says: “You are seeing a number of players consolidate, but the venues remain separate.
“What we’ve learned is that when you consolidate markets, you hurt liquidity. I’m not sure we’re going to see a whole lot of consolidation of trading venues and liquidity pools. You may just see fewer people on them.”