Performance of C++ vs Virtual Machine languages in high frequency finance

Question

I thought the C/C++ vs C#/Java performance question was well trodden, meaning that I\'d read enough evidence to suggest that the VM languages are not necessarily any slower

Answer 1

These firms generally have no limit as to how expensive the hardware is.

If they also don't care how expensive the sofware is, then I'd think that of course C++ can be faster: for example, the programmer might use custom-allocated or pre-allocated memory; and/or they can run code in the kernel (avoiding ring transitions), or on a real-time O/S, and/or have it closely-coupled to the network protocol stack.