> I thought there were already many GPU accelerated paths for graphics in the browser, even including basic CSS functionality which leverages hardware accelerat

> I thought there were already many GPU accelerated paths for graphics in the browser, even including basic CSS functionality which leverages hardware acceleration in a significant number of scenarios. That is true, and therein lies the catch. Those paths must support a significant number of scenarios, which means they must be very generic. This incurs (comparatively) huge performance penalties. Using webgl trades genericity for performance. To put a bunch of 2d coordinate points on a canvas like this library does, only requires the equivalent of 1-2% of CSS functionality that browsers have to go through for every DOM element. It also means that whatever you're drawing has no impact on the rest of the page layout so there's another ton of overheads the browser can skip.