A group of researchers at the University of Antwerp in Belgium have built a supercomputer using consumer grade PC video gaming parts that is as fast as 350 modern CPU cores for less than 4,000 Euros. The research group, ASTRA, built the computer named FASTRA by installing four powerful nVidia graphics cards in one computer to assist in tomography computation, a technique used to generate three-dimensional images of the internal organs of patients by compiling x-ray images.

None of this would be possible without video games.

The four graphic cards the ASTRA team used in the creation of their system, four MSI produced GeForce 9800X2, are extremely powerful video cards which are the direct result of the intensely competitive video card market place.

The demand from the gaming community for better and better 3D games drives video card companies like NVIDIA and AMD to create more powerful GPUs, which in turn pushes the game developers to push their games to higher requirements, which pushes the video card companies again and so on. And at some point along the way people start noticing that a technology which was developed for something generally considered frivolous—video games—now has a new and completely unanticipated medical science application.

The fact that the ultra-competitive video game hardware market created a device which can be used in medical science research is yet another reason why politicians should think twice about censoring or banning games. In fact, some of the most controversial video games, such as Grand Theft Auto IV or Manhunt, are also some of the most graphically demanding. The very games that politicians target are the games pushing technology to its limits.

The FASTRA supercomputer is a perfect example of how technology development in all fields, no matter how frivolous it may seem, has the potential to be valuable—because it has the potential to yield unexpected dividends.