CPUs have had an enormous performance boost over the last few years and I do indeed think it's happened without many realizing. For a big part of the 2010s CPU

CPUs have had an enormous performance boost over the last few years and I do indeed think it's happened without many realizing. For a big part of the 2010s CPUs were kind of stagnant since Intel didn't really have much competition and was happy resting on their laurels and dropping slow incremental upgrades (like a 2012 CPU and a 2016 CPU were basically the same), and AMD were floundering and playing catch up, but when they did catch up and really blow past Intel, it really lit a fire under Intel's ass and now there's real competition for x86 CPUs again. I think it's a pretty favorable description of cloud providers that they will sell you 2015 performance for 2024 dollars.