How CMPT relates to CME compute futures

In one paragraph: CMPT and CME's new GPU futures price the same physical thing — US H100 GPU-hours — but they are different instruments. On 5 October 2026, CME plans to list two cash-settled monthly futures, GPU1 and GPU2, pending CFTC approval. CMPT is a different index, built on a different recipe, and its options settle on a 24-hour average rather than a monthly one. You cannot hedge CME GPU1 one-for-one with a Trion CMPT option today.

What CME is listing

On 5 October 2026, CME (via NYMEX) plans to list two cash-settled monthly futures, pending CFTC approval:

• GPU1 — Silicon Data H100 Rental Index futures.
• GPU2 — Silicon Data B200 Rental Index futures.

Each contract is 730 GPU-hours — one month of a single GPU (365 × 24 ÷ 12). Contracts are quoted in USD per GPU-hour with a $0.01 tick ($7.30 per contract). The floating price is the arithmetic average of the Silicon Data daily on-demand settlement prices for each business day of the contract month. The contract terminates on the last business day of the month. Delivery months run 36 consecutive months, starting October 2026.

CME has filed no options on GPU1 or GPU2.

What CMPT is

CMPT is an H100 SXM on-demand rate from a fixed, published panel of six named venues: Vast.ai, RunPod, SF Compute, Lium, DataCrunch, Shadeform.

The index is a trimmed weighted geometric mean. Each venue contributes the median of its prints over the trailing hour, the single highest and lowest venues are dropped (when at least five print), and the survivors are weighted. Every constituent observation is published with its source URL and timestamp, so anyone can recompute CMPT from raw data.

Trion options settle on a bonded fixing X: the 24 h time-weighted average of the published CMPT index, sampled every five minutes in the window ending at expiry, computed under the series' frozen source recipe. Trading closes 24 h before expiry, when averaging begins. The relayer posts the fixing under a 100 USDG bond, and a 24-hour challenge window lets anyone post a 50 USDG bond to dispute it. See options and the benchmark statement for the exact rules.

The three differences that matter

1. Index construction. CMPT is a trimmed weighted geometric mean of six named venues. Silicon Data's index is a broader, proprietary blend — neocloud, hyperscaler, colocation and brokered — standardized by undisclosed basis factors across GPU variant, term and country. The exact US-configured series CME settles against is not published or reproducible.
2. Averaging window. CME settles a monthly arithmetic average of daily index values. Trion options settle on a 24-hour average of five-minute index samples. CME's P&L is a mean over roughly 21 business days; Trion's is a mean over one day.
3. Licensing. Silicon Data licenses its index for redistribution and for settlement-reference use separately. Trion does not reference Silicon Data at all — CMPT is computed from Trion's own published sources, so no Silicon Data license is involved.

What a basis trade would need

The two H100 numbers are close. On 18 September 2026, CMPT's reconstructed historical daily index ($2.6152/GPU-hr, a reference-only figure — not the live oracle) and the Silicon Data H100 neocloud index ($2.60) sat within ~1% of each other, and both land in the $2.55–$2.79 on-demand H100 SXM range that also includes Ornn's OCPI ($2.79). They agree because they measure the same underlying: US neocloud on-demand H100 capacity. (Akash's on-chain executed leases print lower — about $1.70/GPU-hr — and Trion publishes them as a reference, outside the recipe.)

But a clean one-for-one basis trade is not executable today. The blockers are specific:

• Settlement window. CME's P&L is a monthly average; Trion's is a 24-hour average. The basis is dominated by fixing-basis (one day versus one month), not index-basis.
• Estimator and reproducibility. Trion's trimmed geometric mean of six named venues is not Silicon Data's relevance-weighted average of forty-plus providers, and Silicon Data's settling series is not observable.
• No options leg anywhere else. CME has no options, and no other venue offers a listed options leg on a compute index.

Trion does not reference Silicon Data. CMPT is computed from Trion's own named venues. The two indices agree because they price the same underlying.

Where Trion fits

CMPT is the transparent, auditable, on-chain reference for H100 compute. CME GPU1/GPU2 are the regulated, institutional monthly-average contracts for the same market. They are complements, not substitutes. Trion is the venue where you can trade capped options — buyer never liquidated — on that reference, while CME's futures exist only in plain-vanilla monthly form.

Sources: NYMEX Submission 26-370 (Ch. 1045/1047, retrieved 2026-09-21); CME press release (2026-08-11); Silicon Data methodology (2026-08-27); Silicon Data product page (retrieved 2026-09-21); overdrive/exchange/data/METHODOLOGY.md; docs/public/options.md.

Repository-owned documentation · September 2026 · Educational material, not investment advice and not an audit.