You just need to render your font on the CPU once, and upload mipmaps to the GPU (either signed distance fields, or just sharpened textures, that works absolute

You just need to render your font on the CPU once, and upload mipmaps to the GPU (either signed distance fields, or just sharpened textures, that works absolutely fine too). I think all this GPU font rendering stuff is a bit of a red herring. Are any popular apps or games actually making heavy use of it?