DiPalma says RBC Capital Markets deals primarily in the risk area, "making sure that the hedging exposure is right" and following the interest-rate curve so that when it changes, RBC is properly exposed. "Arbitrage requires a fair amount of computing resources," he says.
He says the firm is taking the underutilized machines in the two groups and using them to run computations. That includes tapping into excess capacity in the disaster-recovery system. He notes that post 9-11, financial-services firms have beefed up their disaster-recovery systems. It means that a "lot of machines and desktops sit around and no one touches them unless there's a disaster. We're trying to harness some of that computer power."
Now, calculations can run over night. "What used to take days to compute is now completed in several hours," DiPalma says, "What we used to do weekly, we now do nightly." As well, the firm can break down computations and do some intraday.
The faster cycle lowers the firm's risk exposure. Right now the projects are functioning independently. In the long run, he says, "We're looking to form one large grid. "What we're trying to do is put the grid in place and offer it to developers as part of the architecture. We want to push it into the software-development lifecycle, so that it becomes part of the developer's routine."
The project started more than a year ago and the bank has been working with Platform Computing of Toronto, a grid software developer that has partnerships with firms like IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
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