Arista's 7124FX Application Switch is "the first network switch that enables customers to run their real-time business applications directly in the network, with a combination of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) hardware-acceleration and software," according to the company's chairman and chief development officer Andreas Bechtolsheim.

"This capability delivers an order-of-magnitude latency performance improvement while allowing customers to gain unique advantages based on their own software running in the Arista Application Switch," added Mr Bechtolsheim.

Candidate applications are said to include equity trading systems, inline risk analysis, market data feed normalisation, deep packet inspection, and signals intelligence.

The 7124FX also features 24 1/10GbE ports, sub-500 nanosecond latency, and Arista's EOS operating system.