In a completely different topic, here we are thinking about the geometry, with GL_EXT_draw_instanced. Let's imagine that we need to display several identical meshes but at different positions. Usually, we would perform as many batches (glDraw*) as the number of times we wish to draw this mesh. With this extension, only one batch is needed. A unique identifier is passed for each instance (gl_InstanceID) which let us apply individual process in the vertex shader, like a transformation. This is a new initiative that will relieve the CPU.