NYSE Pillar

Pillar introduces a standardized wire protocol for connectivity to exchange matching engines and Securities Information Processors (SIPs) operating on the platform.

The Pillar platform supports the matching engines of multiple exchanges, including NYSE, NYSE Arca, NYSE American, NYSE Chicago, and NYSE National. It also serves as the backbone for the Pillar SIP platform, which transitioned from its legacy architecture on July 26, 2021. This migration brought significant improvements in latency to the Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA) and introduced a new binary protocol based on the Pillar wire protocol.

Pillar's architecture resembles most modern electronic matching engines.

The system uses binary message formats with fixed-length fields for efficiency.

Pillar market data operates on a distributed channel architecture where data is partitioned across multiple multicast groups for capacity management. The data is distributed via multicast UDP with built-in redundancy from having two multicast groups per channel (called lines, and also referred to as line A and line B). The system also includes a dedicated request server infrastructure for refresh and retransmission services, allowing clients to recover missed data or obtain current market state snapshots via TCP connections.

The Pillar system supports various auction types including opening auctions, closing auctions, and halt resumption auctions. The system is also capable of publishing imbalance messages during auction periods to provide transparency into auction dynamics.