title: Android, Skia, and hardware accelerated graphics
body: <p>This page <a href="http://source.android.com/devices/graphics.html" rel="nofollow">http://source.android.com/devices/graphics.html</a> says:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Prior to Android 3.0, Canvas used the <strong>Skia</strong> 2D drawing library to draw,
    which could not take advantage of hardware acceleration. Introduced in
    Android 3.0, hardware acceleration for Canvas APIs uses a new drawing
    library called <strong>OpenGLRenderer</strong> that translates Canvas operations to
    OpenGL operations so that they can execute on the GPU.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>However, the Skia page <a href="http://code.google.com/p/skia/" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/skia/</a> says Skia can back end onto OpenGL.</p>
  
  <p>Further, this Skia FAQ <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/skiadocs/user-documentation/faq" rel="nofollow">https://sites.google.com/site/skiadocs/user-documentation/faq</a> says: "SkGLCanvas has been written to direct its drawing calls to OpenGL."</p>
  
  <p>So I am wondering, <strong>is there a particular reason Android doesn't simply use Skia backing onto OpenGL to obtain hardware accelerated graphics?</strong> (Maybe a distinction between OpenGL and OpenGL ES?)</p>