I have read about different implementations of HFT systems on FPGAs.
- Argon HFT system (http://trading-gurus.com/argon-design-an-fpga-based-hft-platform/)
- Hardware-only implementations or hybrid solutions http://msrg.org/publications/pdf_files/2010/moTrading-Efficient_Event_Processing_through_.pdf)
- Domain Specific Langauges for FPGAs to implement feed handlers (http://msrg.org/publications/pdf_files/2010/moTrading-Efficient_Event_Processing_through_.pdf).
Vendors like Cisco claim they have achieved the same results with high performance NIC's (http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-3000-series-switches/white_paper_c11-716030.pdf).
My question is, what part of HFT systems are mostly implemented on FPGAs nowadays? Are FPGAs still very popular? Is only the feed handler implemented on the FPGAs? Because some of these systems described above only have a feed handler implemented on the FPGA, because the strategy changes too much, or is too hard to implement on FPGAs. Others claim that they have also implemented trading strategies on FPGAs or using high performance NICs instead of FPGAs to build HFT systems. I've read about different approaches but I find it hard to compare as most of the results are tested on different input sets.