[hn3333]

Does processing power translate to actual power? Will most stock market gains in the end go to the people with the fastest computers? Will wars be won by the groups with the most processing speed? Was Cyberpunk (slightly) wrong and it's just about having more memory and more instructions per millisecond than the rest? Are sophisticated circuits the new oil?

[smabie]

Well I can answer the stock market question and the answer is a resounding no. Speed at this point is a commodity without a moat and brains are much more important than computational speed. If you're solely making money because you are fast.. well, you probably went out of business or you will soon. Anyone can spend money to be fast (speed is pure function of money spent).

Great ideas are much harder come by. And while you can try and buy your way to the best ideas, it doesn't seem to work all that well.

[dasudasu]

I was reading the latest earnings call transcript of this HFT firm Virtu Financial the other day, and it does appear to be that way.

>So there is a back and forth here and all of the other players that we compete with, they are also economic animals. They don't have any magic elixir or magic algorithm that we don't have, right. We all kind of are doing the same thing and we're all providing great service and value for the marketplace. So I know this a little handy way to give an answer but there is an ebbs and flows around competition. The business continues to be very profitable for us on a net basis. On a gross basis it's incredibly profitable but as I said in my remarks, we have paid, put that in quotes, not in our financials we've provided back to our retail customers about $950 million of price improvement this year.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4386120-virtu-financial-inc...

Top quantitative firms like RenTec don't rely critically on speed or compute power, but rather on high quality data, which they've also said publicly.

[smabie]

Also Virtu is a dying market participant. They were flying high but then lost out. Probably why they're talking about providing price improvements instead of raking in cash.

[xiphias2]

Isn't cyberpunk partly about companies having these most powerful tools to control (predict) people?

[teruakohatu]

Processing power is just a proxy for money+energy which equals power.