Maybe it's just me, but the visualizations do not help me at all.
I am always puzzled by such articles - its actually very well made, drawings are good, little interactive pipeline animations are fine. But in order to follow it you must already know and understand what its writeen about and if you dont - the content is just noise for you.
The article does say what it expects you to know before reading. However, it has a dead link to the knowledge it wants you to know.