What exactly is the benchmark? Is it, say, pure CPU-bound maths? Because a lot of the work between 1979 and today has been about getting the right numbers to the CPU faster, not (just) for the CPU to actually do the math on the numbers.<p>One of the biggest leaps in general computing performance in recent years have been the general availability of SSDs. SSDs makes you computer significantly faster, but not by changing anything about the CPU.