wasmetal

Browsers are using what the OS provides. I am not aware of any browser reimplementing Vulcan, DirectX or Metal, nor am I familiar with any browser reimplementing any feature of the underlying OS. It's just an application where you can build other applications and it provides access to some OS features via a scripting (higher level) language that's highly imperfect but thoroughly documented and used by millions. Speaking of hardware implementation for browser runtime, I just googled in the direction of WASM-in-hardware and came across this: https://github.com/lastmjs/wasm-metal

I personally see WASM as a natural descendant of ASM.js, so in that sense I'd say its not really wrong, just missing a step. I don't know that it's necessarily uncanny though either; ASM.js was already a thing back when that presentation was given, so the existence of WASM isn't really surprising. The real central "prediction" of that talk wasn't WASM, it was METAL, which hasn't quite taken off yet. (The idea is out there[0], but so far mostly just as a self-fulfilling prophecy). [0]: https://github.com/lastmjs/wasm-metal