> What item #3 tells you is that any performance gains in the last decade and a half you've experienced have been driven by multi-core, not faster processors
I think there are other effects too. Things like larger caches, smarter branch predictors, wider cores, etc. My 2021 processor (Apple M1 Pro) benches roughly twice as fast as my 2015 processor (Intel Core i5 2.7Ghz) in both synthetic and real-world single-core workloads.
That's not as big an improvement as we would have seen over that time period in the 90s, but it's a significant improvement none-the-less.
I think there are other effects too. Things like larger caches, smarter branch predictors, wider cores, etc. My 2021 processor (Apple M1 Pro) benches roughly twice as fast as my 2015 processor (Intel Core i5 2.7Ghz) in both synthetic and real-world single-core workloads.
That's not as big an improvement as we would have seen over that time period in the 90s, but it's a significant improvement none-the-less.