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which sequence? is a cooked quant interview question on digital design.
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This is a foundational question about the division of labour between hardware and software in low-latency market connectivity. When an FPGA acts as a network interface card (NIC) to handle exchange communication, it's critical to understand which layer owns the responsibility for TCP sequence-number management.
The question probes whether you understand the TCP/IP stack architecture and where sequencing logic lives in a hardware-accelerated trading system. Specifically, it tests whether you know which component—the FPGA hardware, the host software, or a hybrid approach—must track and assign sequence numbers for outbound messages to maintain protocol compliance and ordering guarantees.