Yes, but what is the state of the art of most server-side web apps, really. Even the most successful web apps don't do all that exciting stuff. Most are just pushing data around and perform well enough with whatever tools you throw at it. In many cases performance is simply not that much of an issue compared to other factors such as development speed.
Javascript is a front-end technology and therefore it is really different and not really suitable for comparison in this case.
It's a flawed argument: any solution that relies on 'hardware will get faster' will only ever be able to catch up to yesterday's state of the art.
Meanwhile, the state of the art will move forward as it takes advantage of increased resources or lower operational costs.