NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut

Re:NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut by dmurray on Monday December 22, 2025 @04:34PM (#46359399)

I never saw a need for this in HFT. In my experience, GPS was used instead, but there was never any critical need for microsecond accuracy in live systems. Sub-microsecond latency, yes, but when that mattered it was in order to do something as soon as possible rather than as close as possible to Wall Clock Time X.

Still useful for post-trade analysis; perhaps you can determine that a competitor now has a faster connection than you.

The regulatory requirement you linked (and other typical requirements from regulators) allows a tolerance of one second, so it doesn't call for this kind of technology.

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Re:NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut by blibble on Monday December 22, 2025 @04:49PM (#46359557)

> I never saw a need for this in HFT. In my experience, GPS was used instead, but there was never any critical need for microsecond accuracy in live systems.

mifid ii (uk/eu) minimum is 1us granularity

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...

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Re:NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut by dmurray on Monday December 22, 2025 @05:21PM (#46359864)

It's 1 us granularity, which means you should report your timestamps with six figures after the decimal point.

The required accuracy (Tables 1 and 2 in that document) is 100 us or 1000 us depending on the system.

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Re:NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut by blibble on Monday December 22, 2025 @05:52PM (#46360153)

> The required accuracy (Tables 1 and 2 in that document)

no, Tables 1 and 2 say divergence, not accuracy

accuracy is a mix of both granularity and divergence

regardless, your statement before:

> The regulatory requirement you linked (and other typical requirements from regulators) allows a tolerance of one second, so it doesn't call for this kind of technology.

is not true

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Re:NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut by metaphor on Tuesday December 23, 2025 @02:53AM (#46363338)

> accuracy is a mix of both granularity and divergence

I respectfully disagree.

In context, "granularity" is nothing more than a resolution constraint on reported timestamps. Its inclusion adjacent to the specified "divergence from UTC" is a function of market manipulation surveillance objectives as discussed in preamble item (2), and really doesn't have anything to do with accuracy proper.

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Re:NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut by broretore on Tuesday December 23, 2025 @08:05PM (#46371328)

any time i am certain of something i never capitalize and i do not end my sentences with periods or use any punctuation because i like people to believe i am an omniscient narrator who cannot be interrupted

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Re:NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut by throw0101c on Monday December 22, 2025 @09:55PM (#46361909)

> mifid ii (uk/eu) minimum is 1us granularity

1us is nothing special for GPS/NTP/PTP appliances (especially with OCXO/rubidium oscillators):

* https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/sy...

* https://www.meinbergglobal.com/english/productinfo/gps-time-...

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