> I isn't "simulated" by GPUs, it is a rendering mode that GPUs had since before they were called GPUs.

Yes, of course. That's what I meant. I didn't mean "simulate" as in fake, I meant it more as in "replicate the same effect". Ultimately, hardware and software are equivalent, give or take matters of costs, debugging and performance.

> In the time of fixed pipelines (3Dfx to GeForce 3), you couldn't do arbitrary operations on pixels, so some effects, like the kind that are common in the demoscene were software only. So games that used these effects, like Comanche voxels can indeed be thought as representative of software rendering, and they can, of course, be simulated on modern GPUs as everything that was done on software before can.

Yes, I think that's the spirit in which TFA's term "software rendering" must be taken. The context is old games and their pipelines as they were used at the time, not more recent GPUs or practices.

> The tricks used by the Quake engine are awesome, but they don't beat raw power.

I really don't think the article is contesting this.