I visit Elliotte Rusty Harold's excellent Cafe con Leche Java and XML pages every other day to find the latest news on Java and XML.  From his XML page, I found svgl, a library that displays SVG pictures using OpenGL, taking advantage of the GPU.  At svgl site, I also found Smoke, a similar library that uses OpenGL to render SVG.  Both uses FreeType 2 for text rendering.  Frankly, I feel that SVG lost much of its initial momentum, thanks to lack of leadership from companies like Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft.