How is high-performance computing (HPC) technology used on Wall Street now, particularly given the current climate?
Saint-Amour: Capital markets firms have enormous pressure to uncover risk and determine their exposure in today’s economic climate. Wall Street firms are using high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to perform more real-time or intra-day risk analysis of trades and their impact on portfolios. Computational finance can especially benefit from the speed improvements of HPC. Although credit derivatives and exotic investments are popular, an obvious cost is associated with this trend. As new alternative investment products are introduced, risk or portfolio managers need analysis tools to get an accurate and timely view of a funds worth and value at risk (VaR). However, advances in pricing, advanced analytics and risk and margin analysis tools now require computational horsepower that exceeds the power of a desktop computer.PressPass: What are the benefits of Windows HPC Server 2008 for financial services firms?Mendillo: Financial services firms have less to spend on IT projects, but st
