By Kevin Gildea, Vladimir Polin, and Keegan Sheedy, Intel Corporation
Intel® Xeon® Processors Set the Financial Standard
When the market closes, the real work begins. Portfolios shift, scenarios expand, and job schedulers fan out thousands of pricing and risk tasks across your grid. Two dials matter every day: how much work you can push through before the opening bell, and how predictably you can do it as conditions change. Throughput without predictability misses SLAs; efficiency without scale misses the window.
That’s why enterprises trust Intel® Xeon® 6 processors. Intel has demonstrated leadership on industry‑standard STAC benchmarks for trading and risk. Now we show the same strength in QuantLib, the open‑source foundation for real‑world pricing and risk models. Strong throughput for large batch runs, efficient execution for latency and license‑sensitive workflows, and consistent scaling as concurrency increases. This balance translates into faster time to insight and more accurate measures of risk during volatile sessions.
STAC and QuantLib: Industry Benchmarks and Open-Source Reality
Financial services institutions (FSI) measure and manage performance using standardized benchmarks and open-source frameworks. Intel® Xeon® 6 processors demonstrate leadership in both, closing the loop between audited industry tests and real-world scenarios.
QuantLib
The QuantLib project is a well-established open-source framework for quantitative finance, with a 25-year history of providing robust tools for financial modeling and risk management. Recently, a benchmark suite has been introduced, providing a valuable resource for conducting evaluations and exploring potential improvements to the library in straightforward ways.
The benchmark in QuantLib v1.39 packages 87 workloads from the library’s quality assurance suite and runs them concurrently, measuring an overall benchmark throughput on a given hardware and software stack can complete them. In comparison to highly optimized benchmarks such as STAC-A2, where algorithms are separated from QA and may fully utilize hardware capabilities, the workloads in this benchmark use QA tests without optimizations. Internal repetition count varies from 1 to 100000 for different tests, and every test includes an initialization and a deinitialization. Additionally, benchmarks contribute differently to the performance score for different launch sizes. External repetition count varies with the benchmark suite launch size. For QuantLib v1.39 sizes are XXS=60, XS=120, S=240, M=480, L=960 or user defined.
STAC
Strategic Technology Analysis Center (STAC) is an organization aiming to improve technology discovery and assessment in the finance industry through dialogue and research. The STAC Benchmark Council, composed of representatives from leading financial and trading firms, collaborates to tackle technical challenges related to the adoption of new technologies. The Council produces standardized benchmark tests that help financial firms understand how well their technology systems, such as trading platforms or data analytics tools, perform under different conditions.
The Results
In partnership with Micron, we recently published how Intel® Xeon® processors were used to set a new world record for STAC-A2 results, which can be reviewed here: 35.2 milliseconds to market insight. In this post, we’ll focus on our latest round of benchmarks with the QuantLib suite, showcasing similar strength.
Across the QuantLib “Size L” suite, Intel® Xeon® 6972P processors (96 cores) deliver near-top throughput within 10% of 128-core systems. And at equal core count, Intel Xeon 6980P processors (128 cores) extend the lead. That translates to better autoscaling behavior, greater efficiency, and a greener footprint, all without giving up the throughput needed to succeed.
Figure 1: Normalized relative QuantLib v1.39 performance per vCPU
Figure 2: S-curve, QuantLib v1.39, Intel® Xeon® 6980P processors vs AMD EPYC™ 9755 processors, see notes for numbers
Figure 3: Normalized relative QuantLib v1.39 throughput per server
Note: For optimal performance, it is recommended to utilize vendor-specific compilers. Therefore, we employ the DPC++ compiler for Intel Xeon processor systems and the AOCC compiler for AMD EPYC processor systems.
From STAC to QuantLib, Intel Xeon® 6 processors continue to demonstrate leadership across the workloads that institutions rely on every day. STAC shows Intel at the top of industry-standard tests, while QuantLib confirms that strength translates directly into the open-source models used for pricing portfolios, running risk overnight, and keeping pace with market volatility. For quant desks and risk teams, that means finishing calculations before market open, hitting intraday SLAs without overprovisioning, and controlling license costs. These results highlight Intel’s commitment to delivering not just benchmark wins, but tangible performance gains in the real-world financial workloads that matter most.
Notices & Disclaimers
Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors. Performance results are based on testing as of dates shown in configurations and may not reflect all publicly available updates. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Your costs and results may vary.
System Configurations:
- 1-node, 2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) 6972P, 96 cores, HT On, Turbo On, Total Memory 1536GB (24x64GB DDR5 8800 MT/s [8800 MT/s]), BIOS BHSDCRB1.IPC.3544.P80.2506250319, microcode 0x10003e0, 1x I210 Gigabit Network Connection, 1x 953.9G KXG60ZNV1T02 KIOXIA, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, 6.8.0-71-generic, QuantLib v1.39, Intel(R) oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler 2025.2.0 (2025.2.0.20250605). Test by Intel Corporation as of 08/11/25.
- 1-node, 2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) 6980P, 128 cores, HT On, Turbo On, Total Memory 1536GB (24x64GB DDR5 8800 MT/s [8800 MT/s]), BIOS BHSDREL1.IPC.3544.P64.2505160241, microcode 0x10003d0, 1x MT28908 Family [ConnectX-6], 1x I210 Gigabit Network Connection, 1x 894.3G Micron_7450_MTFDKBG960TFR, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, 6.8.0-71-generic, QuantLib v1.39, Intel(R) oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler 2025.2.0 (2025.2.0.20250605). Test by Intel Corporation as of 08/11/25.
- 1-node, 2x AMD EPYC 9755 128-Core Processor, 128 cores, SMT On, Turbo On, Total Memory 1536GB (24x64GB DDR5 6400 MT/s [6000 MT/s]), BIOS 1.3a, microcode 0xb00211e, 2x I350 Gigabit Network Connection, 1x 3.5T KIOXIA KCMYDRUG3T84, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, 6.8.0-64-generic, QuantLib v1.39, AMD clang version 17.0.6 (CLANG: AOCC_5.0.0-Build#1377 2024_09_24). Test by Intel Corporation as of 08/11/25.
Build Command Lines:
- Intel(R) oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler 2025.2.0 (2025.2.0.20250605)
- BOOSTROOT=~/benchmarking/boost-1.88 cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles" -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DQL_ENABLE_PARALLEL_UNIT_TEST_RUNNER=1 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=icpx -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-O3 -ffast-math -D__FAST_MATH__=1 -fimf-use-svml=true:exp,pow,expl,erf -fimf-domain-exclusion=31 -fimf-precision=med -fno-math-errno -fno-finite-math-only -fhonor-nans -Wno-unused-command-line-argument -fno-associative-math -march=graniterapids" ; make -j; cd test-suite/
- AMD clang version 17.0.6 (CLANG: AOCC_5.0.0-Build#1377 2024_09_24):
- BOOSTROOT=~/benchmarking/boost-1.88 cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles" -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DQL_ENABLE_PARALLEL_UNIT_TEST_RUNNER=1 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-O3 -zopt -march=znver5 -fveclib=AMDLIBM -lamdlibm -Wno-unused-command-line-argument" ; make -j ; cd test-suite
S-curve data, QuantLib v1.39, Intel® Xeon® 6980P processors vs AMD EPYC™ 9755 processors:
testCalibrationTwoInstrumentSets-0.63,testSabrNormalVolatility-0.63,testCalibrationOneInstrumentSet-0.70,testCachedMarketValue-0.70,testWeightedModifiedBesselFunctions-0.75,testGammaFunction-0.78,testHalton-0.79,testSwaps-0.81,testFlatVolCalibration-0.81,testConsistency-0.82,testTimeDependentInterestRates-0.82,testFactorial-0.83,testDAXCalibration-0.83,testPiecewiseConstantInterpolation-0.84,testLinearInterpolation-0.84,testAndreasenHugePut-0.84,testAndreasenHugeCall-0.85,testCalibration-0.85,testLocalVolatility-0.86,testAndreasenHugeCallPut-0.86,testFlatForwardConsistency-0.86,testModifiedBesselFunctions-0.87,testVanillaEngines-0.87,testMersenneTwisterDiscrepancy-0.87,testMomentBasedGaussianPolynomial-0.87,testAmericanCallPutParity-0.87,testImpliedVol-0.87,testFdmHestonAmerican-0.88,testMonteCarloCalibration-0.89,testIsdaEngine-0.89,testArbitrageFree-0.90,testFdBSSwingOption-0.90,testLocalVolFromHestonModel-0.91,testVPPPricing-0.91,testSwaptionPricing-0.92,testSabrVols-0.92,testConvexMonotoneForwardConsistency-0.92,testGlobalBootstrap-0.92,testBermudanSwaption-0.93,testSpreadedCube-0.93,testMultiStepCoterminalSwapsAndSwaptions-0.93,testFdmHestonBarrierVsBlackScholes-0.94,testCachedValues-0.94,testBarrierPricingViaHestonLocalVol-0.94,testAmericanOption-0.95,testVarianceGamma-0.95,testFdValues-0.95,testFdAmericanGreeks-0.96,testMcEngines-0.96,testCachedHullWhite2-0.96,testImpliedHazardRate-0.96,testMultiStepCmSwapsAndSwaptions-0.97,testCachedHullWhiteFixedReversion-0.97,testCallPutParity-0.97,testAnalyticVsMCPricing-0.97,testAnalyticAndMcVsJumpDiffusion-0.97,testGauss-0.99,testCachedG2Values-0.99,testDAXCalibration-1.00,testCmsSwap-1.03,testResults-1.03,testCouponPricing-1.03,testQdEngineStandardExample-1.03,testExtOUJumpVanillaEngine-1.04,testGammaValues-1.06,testBootstrapRegression-1.09,testBootstrapWithArithmeticAverage-1.11,testMultiDimRegression-1.15,testUp-1.16,testBond-1.16,testCeiling-1.16,testFloor-1.16,testExtOUJumpSwingOption-1.18,testDown-1.18,testClosest-1.19,testBaseBootstrap-1.19,testKlugeExtOUSpreadOption-1.26,testIncrementalStatistics-1.28,testParity-1.32,testNonCentralChiSquaredSumOfNodes-1.36,testSquareRootCLVVanillaPricing-1.38,testSquareRootCLVMappingFunction-1.46,testFdAmerican-1.46,testHestonFokkerPlanckFwdEquation-1.53,testFdBarrierVsCached-1.55,testNonCentralChiSquared-2.55,testConversions-4.01