It depends on the market. Most trading venues don't really require a latency much below 100us. The only ones that do are the ones that are fully deterministic. If fastest guy wins, then all you have to do is throw a good tech team at the problem and then money comes in.
Targeting a non-deterministic venue comes with its own set of challenges which are not purely technical. You don't know how long it will take for your order to reach the matching engine nor the likelihood of things changing before it gets there. Simulation is also more difficult. So you have to rely on alpha instead, which is a different game.
Targeting a non-deterministic venue comes with its own set of challenges which are not purely technical. You don't know how long it will take for your order to reach the matching engine nor the likelihood of things changing before it gets there. Simulation is also more difficult. So you have to rely on alpha instead, which is a different game.