Very few HFT firms are routinely operating in the nanosecond range. Under 50 microseconds is where most lie, and under 10 microseconds is where you'll find the

Very few HFT firms are routinely operating in the nanosecond range. Under 50 microseconds is where most lie, and under 10 microseconds is where you'll find the fastest algos. Fact is, at that point even if you're colo-ing as a market maker the length of cable makes a difference. FPGA's and even ASIC's are pretty much necessary since even a CPU with off-die memory is going to be too slow HFT is increasingly harder to make profits in: the real growth is in algos operating in the low milliseconds range capturing real market activity and non simple arbitrage.