How Video Games Influence Computing

Video gaming is influential in our market. Due to video gaming demands, graphics processing unit (GPU) chips advanced at an astonishing rate in computational performance over the last decade.

Early games had simple graphics and did not need much computation to display the game on the screen. Then graphics became complex, but were still all pre-planned and never varied as a function of the gamer’s input.

Today, games use physics simulations to determine what is displayed on the screen in real-time. For instance, imagine a scenario where a gaming character swings a mace and chain to strike a tree. There are infinite ways ways the player can move the mace and chain, infinite potential spots the character can stand around the tree, infinite angles at which the mace and chain can strike the tree, and so forth. It is impossible for the software to pre-compute all of those infinite scenarios.

Rather than pre-compute all the scenes and movements, software developers instead write physics equations that describe how the links of the chain should move relative to each other given how the character is instructed to swing. More physics equations are used to describe how the mace should move and the angle at which it should strike the tree. Even more physics equations are used to describe how the impact of the mace on the tree affects the tree and where the splinters and bark fly as they are dislodged from the tree.

All of that is computational. It’s math and physics. It’s not even really a game or graphics. Just math and physics at its essence.

So GPUs have become very good at math, physics, and computation, especially parallel computations. The computations are done in parallel to make them fast. It’s vital to video games that all of those physics computations complete in real-time so that players don’t notice any hesitation in game play.

Other chips have similarly become very good at high-throughput computations over the last decade, but it is interesting to realize how video gaming has spurred important advances in math, science, and computation.

How have you noticed video gaming push the technological envelope?