Google and Nasdaq Pursuing Nano-Second Precision In Network Time Protocol (nytimes.com)

"Computer scientists at Stanford University and Google have created technology that can track time down to 100 billionths of a second," reports The New York Times. "It could be just what Wall Street is looking for." Form the report: System engineers at Nasdaq, the New York-based stock exchange, recently began testing an algorithm and software that they hope can synchronize a giant network of computers with that nanosecond precision. They say they have built a prototype, and are in the process of deploying a bigger version. For an exchange like Nasdaq, such refinement is essential to accurately order the millions of stock trades that are placed on their computer systems every second. Ultimately, this is about money. With stock trading now dominated by computers that make buying and selling decisions and execute them with blazing speed, keeping that order also means protecting profits. So-called high frequency trading firms place trades in a fraction of a second, sometimes in a bet that they can move faster than bigger competitors.

Comments

Re:GPS time

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting precise time to better than a ns from GPS is not a trivial task (Hint: ionospheric weather routinely changes the naive answer by more than 10ns) but it is an achievable task. But at that level, everything matters. Is your antenna cable temperature-compensated? What's the temperature coefficient of your receiving hardware? Huygens seems to claim synchronization to the few 10s of ns, which is on the face of it a considerably easier proposition, but sounds interestingly challenging for commodity computers.

Re: Life in prison is a long time in nanoseconds

[arth1]

ntp is designed to minimize time jumps, skewing by small amounts more often. timesyncd is just a reinvention of old timed, including unfounded beliefs in predictable network latency, and, yes, clock jumps where none are needed.

Re:wrong way

[phantomfive]

No, limit means "buy at X price or lower." The front-runner drives the price up a few pennies, so without the front-runner you would have bought it at price Y < X, with the front runner you get it at a price Y + $.03 < X. So you're still losing pennies. It's a small enough amount that most people really don't care, but it's frustrating to get ripped off like that.