Ultra Low Latency Solution with U4 enables high-velocity trading

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.