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Introducing Google Cloud’s U4 compute: Enabling ultra-low latency trading Disha Chopra Product Manager, Google Cloud Yarden Halperin Product Manager, Google Cloud In capital markets, operational success is built on predictable performance and low latency, where even tiny variations in packet timing alter queue priority and trade execution. At the same time, both exchange venues and their participants face mounting constraints in traditional on-premises data centers — from power and physical rack space limits to lengthy hardware procurement cycles. Increasingly, global capital markets seek the speed and determinism of physical co-location combined with the dynamic scalability and automation of the cloud. At Google Cloud Next ‘26, we announced the Ultra Low Latency (ULL) Solution, now generally available, providing high-frequency trading workflows that run in the cloud with an ultra-low latency network and agility. The ULL Solution includes the new U4 machine family, also generally available today. The ULL Solution is based on three infrastructure pillars: - Hardware-level networking: Scaleable, hardware-based multicast data distribution for reliable market-data feeds - Advanced networking observability: Dynamic network traffic capture with hardware-level timing accuracy, facilitating consistent auditing, market replays, and absolute trade validation without impacting primary traffic performance - Deterministic high-performance compute: Processing of latency-critical execution tiers in a highly predictable, consistent amount of time, every single time Taken together, the ULL Solution’s compute, storage, networking, and observability provide financial exchanges and market participants with a number of technical capabilities: - Bare metal performance: Dedicated bare metal compute provides direct access to physical host resources, minimizing jitter and delivering predictable, low-latency execution for market-data feeds and order routing. - High-performance storage options: Local Titanium SSDs handle real-time transaction and tick logging on the host, complemented by scalable Google Cloud Hyperdisk for persistent market data archives and analytics. - Physical traffic isolation: The ULL trading fabric’s redundant A/B multicast market feeds are accessed through two independent and dedicated Titanium adapters, while an independent third Titanium adapter offloads telemetry, management, and provides access to Google Cloud services. - Hardware-accelerated multicast distribution: The ULL network architecture supports hardware-level multicast feed ingestion. This allows participants to stream high-throughput market data directly to low-latency trading applications, bypassing traditional hypervisor-level virtual switches. - Accelerated packet processing: Support for OpenOnload and DPDK enables Linux user-space networking to deliver predictable unicast and multicast packet handling while minimizing application code changes. - Precision timing and UTC synchronization: Integration with Google Cloud’s Firefly clock synchronization system allows the solution to consistently achieve sub-10 nanosecond network-level timestamping and better synchronization to UTC than the sub-100 microsecond regulatory requirement for financial exchanges. - Built-in telemetry: 24/7 low-latency packet capture and seamless out-of-band packet brokering for regulatory compliance and real-time analytics helps ensure deep visibility without impacting primary traffic performance. - 24-7 market ready: The solution is designed for continuous, round-the-clock trading readiness by isolating production workloads in a dedicated primary zone for live trading, while routine cloud maintenance and qualification testing occur in a secondary zone for updates and testing. Compute in the ULL Solution is delivered by the new U4 machine family, which brings predictable performance and ultra-low latency compute in three specialized machine series: dual-socket bare metal instances with three physical NICs — U4P for exchange operators and U4C for market participants — alongside U4S high-performance VMs for operators, participants, and service providers. We developed the U4 machine family to enable the world’s most technically demanding markets to run within Google Cloud and benefit from cloud services and scale. An example of this is our ongoing collaboration with CME Group, through which we are migrating listed derivatives markets to Google Cloud. Here, the U4C and U4P bare metal instances deliver direct physical co-location latency parity, providing predictable low-latency clock precision, and native hardware-multicast feed ingestion. This architecture demonstrates that core exchange systems and trading strategies can run in the cloud with the speed, consistency, and control that financial markets require. "Migrating the world’s leading derivatives marketplace to the cloud requires uncompromising performance, latency, and reliability. Google Cloud’s Ultra Low Latency Solution and the U4 instance families represent a breakthrough for financial market infrastructure. By combining deterministic, ultra-low latency networking and dedicated bare metal compute with the benefits of the cloud, market participants can execute and ingest market data and execute with the speed of traditional co-location and the agility of the cloud." - Pearce Peck-Walden, Managing Director Markets Engineering, CME Group Powered by Google Cloud-native infrastructure The ULL Solution is available in select private Google Cloud regions, where trading teams can leverage core cloud infrastructure benefits such as rapid automated resource provisioning, on-demand capacity scaling, and dynamic fleet management. Trading teams can execute ultra-low latency trades on a dedicated, isolated ULL network, and offload data streams over an independent network interface to Google Cloud services such as BigQuery and Gemini Enterprise. For exchange participants managing tick-to-trade workflows or processing real-time market data, microsecond variations are critical. As bare metal instances, U4P and U4C machine series don’t add any virtualization overhead for latency-sensitive execution tiers. Leveraging Google Cloud's Titanium offload system architecture, these bare metal instances provide direct access to the host resources. Compute Engine instances enable users to provision dedicated hardware through standard Google Cloud APIs, orchestrate deployments with infrastructure as code, apply Cloud Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) policies, and collect rich telemetry. The U4S VM series complements these bare metal offerings for applications such as pre-trade risk validation and real-time analytics. Deployed alongside U4P and U4C instances, these VMs shorten transit hops across the trading architecture while offering elastic scaling from 2 to 288 vCPUs and networking up to 100 Gbps. “Our testing of the U4 instances validated that Google Cloud delivers the low latency and determinism required for our demanding exchange trading workloads. Having both bare metal and VM options allows us to evaluate the value of that performance relative to its cost, helping us align the right infrastructure to each of our trading strategies.” - Corbin Kidd, EVP/CTO, Prime Trading "In our tick-to-trade performance testing, the U4C bare metal instance demonstrated exceptional speed, showing that cloud compute and ultra-low latency networking can comfortably satisfy microsecond trading demands. But, what sets the U4 series apart isn't just raw processing speed, it’s structural determinism. When we stress-tested Google Cloud's U4 bare metal family, the performance curve remained virtually flat, which confirms that these cloud compute layouts can now offer the strict determinism institutional market participants require." - Christopher Wilson, Global Head of Experience Modernization, 28Stone Looking to the future, this low-latency architecture serves as the foundation for algorithmic trading, allowing firms to feed real-time markets directly into AI-driven trading models. Storage and placement for trading workloads The U4 family supports Google Cloud storage options and placement policies, helping trading teams record trades at speed and minimize network latency between machines: - Local Titanium SSD for fast logging: For real-time trade logging and data caching without slowing down execution, U4P and U4C provide up to 12 TiB of direct-attached NVMe SSDs, and U4S VMs scale up to 18 TiB. - Hyperdisk for data archives: For historical market data, backtesting models, and regulatory archives, you can attach Hyperdisk Balanced and Hyperdisk Extreme volumes across all U4 series, scaling up to 32 volumes and 512 TiB per instance. - Placement policies: To reduce physical network hops, compact placement policies keep related machines close together in the data center. Alternatively, spread placement policies place machines on separate racks to improve resiliency. Getting started with the ULL Solution With the ULL Solution, financial exchange operators, exchange participants, and trading service providers can execute trades with the speed and reliability they need today while positioning their businesses to leverage continuously evolving AI and infrastructure capabilities for the trading of tomorrow. The ULL Solution is available in select Google Cloud regions. To learn more, check out the public documentation, and reach out to our team to request access.
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