John Barreiro

As markets become faster and more fragmented, trading firms are reassessing whether traditional software-based infrastructure can keep pace with rising performance and capacity demands. This workshop explores why a shift toward hardware-based trading infrastructure is inevitable and its potential impact on execution speed, latency, and system scalability. Like the evolution of networking and telecom industries, the session will examine how moving critical trading functions- such as market access gateways, pre-trade risk controls, and order handling- into hardware can reshape the design of modern trading systems and influence future infrastructure strategies.

Participants will learn:

• How hardware-based trading architecture differs from traditional software-based systems

• Why latency, determinism, and efficiency are driving interest in hardware-based implementations

• What the transition could mean for trading performance, infrastructure strategy, and competitive positioning