Every once and a while, a new technology allows computers to improve dramatically in speed, processing power, size (smaller size), or memory. Examples include the invention of the vacuum tube, transistor, RAM, integrated circuits, and others.

In the last decade, I think that there has been a lack of significant progress in computers, specifically hardware. The increased power of the modern PC is not due to some revolutionary breakthrough, it is simply because more transistors have been added. The transistors themselves have been simply shrunken down, not really changing the operation. Intel is still making new proccessors based off of the 8086 instruction set, which was made in 1978.

So, what sort of major innovations have occurred in this past decade? Do you believe that we have made as much progress between 2012 and 1978 as between 1978 and 1944 (equal time spans)?