Many of the solutions being worked on in the lab are truly fantastic. They involve using pulses of light to transfer data through crystals and a process called quantum mechanical tunnelling, which allows chips to function at sizes of less than 10 nanometres (a nanometre is one billionth of a metre).
But traders’ hopes of remote working from a desert island may have been dashed. The competition for speed is now so intense that the physical proximity of the trading desk has become a factor in performance.
