TinyGL is intended to be a very small implementation of a subset of OpenGL * for embedded systems or games. It is a software only implementation. Only the main OpenGL calls are implemented.

The main strength of TinyGL is that it is fast and simple because it does not have to be completely compatible with OpenGL. In particular, the texture mapping and the geometrical transformations are very fast. TinyGL is a lot faster than Mesa or the software Solaris OpenWin OpenGL implementation for the VReng Virtual Reality engine for example.