Reclaiming Performance: The Strategic Role of C++ in High-Volume Financial Transaction Systems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22399/ijcesen.4202Keywords:
C++ Programming Language, Financial Transaction Systems, High-Frequency Trading, Performance Optimization, Parallel ProcessingAbstract
The financial technology industry faces unprecedented computational complexity requiring transaction processing systems that respond at microsecond time frames and process millions of operations in a second. This article puts C++ in a position of strategic technology foundation for high-performance financial systems, as opposed to seeing it as legacy infrastructure to be replaced. New C++ standards have revolutionized the language in profound ways with features like smart pointers, move semantics, parallel algorithms and coroutines, effectively solving long-standing criticisms while maintaining the deterministic execution behavior that is so critical for latency-sensitive financial transactions. The architectural development towards microservices and cloud-native deployments from monolithic traditional systems first went in favor of higher-level languages with high-speed development cycles, but with accelerating growth in transaction volumes and greater algorithmic trading complexity, underlying constraints in managed runtime environments have been exposed. Today's financial workloads in the form of high-frequency trading, real-time payment, risk computation, and compliance necessitate performance properties that system programming alone can provide via direct control over hardware and deterministic resource utilization. This article illustrates how C++ offers unmatched support for memory management, parallelism and hardware-level optimization while supporting complete continuity with contemporary DevOps protocols and cloud paradigms. The strategic placement of C++ in thoughtfully architected layered systems allows financial institutions to optimize performance for mission-critical transaction processing pipelines, all while taking advantage of higher-level languages to implement orchestration, business logic, and user interface aspects, thus producing balanced technology environments that maximize operational efficiency and developer productivity without giving up competitive edge.
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