The street of dreams is paying attention to video game tech these days, and not just in terms of potential investments.

Wall Street & Technology reports that the same graphics processors (GPUs) employed in modern game consoles are powering specialized financial displays.

Frank Tan, a Deutsche Bank options trader, told WS&T:

With the advancement of computer gaming and graphics technology like PlayStation and Xbox, these graphics cards are a lot more capable [than ever]. The idea is to use the GPUs for financial calculations rather than playing games and generating graphics...

 

First, there is the sheer number of messages and data coming in... Every time the underlying price changes, or if there is a shift in the options quotes, the options prices... have to be recomputed. The GPU has the capability to solve the second computational issue. Before GPU technology came out, in order to solve this problem in real time, you would have to buy supercomputers.