Will Financial Industry Need Underwater Data Centers?

Recent advances in high-frequency financial trading have made light propagation delays between geographically separated exchanges relevant,” write MIT professors Alexander Wissner-Gross and Cameron Freer.

The MIT researchers have done detailed calculations about where trading networks can locate data center infrastructure to capture additional microseconds. They first mapped out the locations of major global exchanges, and then charted the optimal placement of servers to create “chains” that could accelerate the transmission of pricing data and execution of trades. Many of the locations are under oceans.

read the paper here