Supported standards

• Supports FIX versions 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 5.0, 5.0SP1, 5.0SP2, FIXT1.1

• MiFID II compliance

• FIX session layer protocols: FIX.4.2, FIX4, FIXT, LFIXT

• FIX transport layer protocol: FIXS

• Supports all tags for each version and multiple versions simultaneously

• ITCH protocol support

High performance and low latency

• Microsecond Tick-to-Trade latency

• 99th percentile latency: under 4 microseconds for reading, processing, and writing ExecutionReport messages (150–200 bytes) at 40,000 messages/second

• 99.9th percentile latency: ~1 microsecond for parsing 200-byte messages and generating 100–200 byte messages

• Optimized message parser accepts fields in expected order for increased speed (default follows fixprotocol.org documentation; any FIX-valid order supported with minimal latency impact)

• Networking optimised for Solarflare network cards

• Schema optimisation: generates a streamlined schema from actual FIX log usage for higher performance

Scalability and load balancing

• Handles 100,000 messages per second per session (100–200 bytes per NewOrderSingle/ExecutionReport)

• Comfortably processes one million messages per second on typical enterprise hardware

• Supports hundreds of concurrent connections with minimal latency impact

• Load balancing and routing based on standard and custom tags via Chronicle FIX Router

Configuration

• Configurable via YAML files and/or Java code

• QuickFIX-style XML schema support

• Dynamic reconfiguration without engine restart, including:

  • Adding or deleting FIX sessions

  • Updating session settings

  • Adjusting session scheduling

Security

• Native TLS support for mutual and simple authentication

• Lightweight proxy for TLS/SSL support, enabling all endpoint combinations without modifying existing applications

• Encryption of all logged and replicated messages

Monitoring and testing

• Records connection information per session at multiple configurable levels; compatible with visualization tools like Splunk

• Probe interfaces for recording detailed timing events in the FIX engine

• Web interface for parsing raw FIX messages and displaying them in human-readable format with detailed field information

• Command-line tools for debugging and testing

• Tools for reading or dumping logged FIX messages

• Deterministic replay of historical FIX messages from Chronicle Queue into Chronicle FIX, enabling reproduction of production issues and testing of experimental strategies

• High-performance client stress testing

Memory management

• Engineered for minimal garbage generation

• Zero-copy between FIX messages and data model, reducing garbage collection and increasing speed

• Runtime code generation for compact code and efficient CPU cache usage

• Buffer recycling and use of object pools/mutable StringBuilders: end-to-end message handling with less than one byte of garbage per message (on average)

• Pre-allocated memory for message objects avoids dynamic allocation

Failover

• Automatically detects communication link failures and reconnects FIX sessions

• Supports failover to a hot secondary via replication in three modes:

• Synchronous: main server waits for secondary acknowledgment before publishing messages, ensuring reliability

• Asynchronous: relaxed acknowledgment for balanced resilience and latency

• Custom: clients define their own replication tolerance and behavior

Web user interface

• User-friendly web interface for configuring, maintaining, and monitoring sessions (routing or non-routing) and querying message logs

• Visualizes all configured sessions, their status (active, inactive, etc.), and live sequence numbers

• Search historic FIX messages by field name, tag number, SessionID, free text, or combinations, displaying messages in human-readable format with detailed field info

• Interactive environment with helpful configuration property information to prevent and detect errors before runtime

Customisable properties

• Customizable session-level messages, including exchange-specific fields (e.g., custom login object with username and password)

• User-defined accept strategies for connections (e.g., whitelist IP addresses)

• Custom replication timeout and acknowledgment settings

• Alternative event loop and pausing strategies (busy spin, back-off wait, or external event loop implementation)

• Bind FIX engine and replication event loops to isolated CPU cores for lower latency

• Customizable message sequence number management with persistent session state via Chronicle Queue (replication available with Chronicle Queue Enterprise license)

• Custom connection strategy: defines order and number of attempts for initiators connecting to server socket addresses

• Configurable timestamps (microseconds or nanoseconds) per session

• Optional checksum verification (saves ~0.2 microseconds if disabled)

• External data structures can be passed to Chronicle FIX

• Modular framework allows flexible per-session configuration for:

• Message persistence

• Message parsing

• Message validation

• Message handling

Supported environments

• Java 8, 11, and 17 on Oracle, OpenJDK, and Azul Zing/Zulu (x64 processors)

• Operating systems: Linux, Windows, and macOS

Other resources and support

• Runnable examples with descriptions on GitHub

• On-demand changes: customers can fork the code, submit pull requests, and raise issues on GitHub

• Full support for all solution components due to the native implementation