3 ms·

Light travels 300km in 1 millisecond. Intra datacenter latency is not bounded by physics. It is bounded by current technology.

• hotpotamus 4y ago
  And in 1 millisecond, a 1Ghz CPU will have 1 million cycles. It's a bit like sending a letter and then waiting a month or two for a response.
  • dns_snek 4y ago
    Nitpick: 1 billion, not 1 million ;)
    • osigurdson 4y ago
      THz?
      • dns_snek 4y ago
        From the original comment, 1 GHz = 1 billion Hz = 1 billion cycles But reading it again, I somehow missed the "In 1 ms" part, which makes it correct.
• ahachete 4y ago
  Light travels much slower (~1.5x slower) on a fiber optic, due to the refractive index (~ 1.5) of the fiber.
  • osigurdson 4y ago
    Yes, but that is not even the lowest latency technology available today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_factor