Its been many years since I saw the presentation but I believe they made a point of mentioning that ring buffers are not a new technology. They mentioned how such data structures are used all the time in network devices, such as switches.

The disruptor is an actual library based on ring buffers (other have already pointed out some other features).

In practical terms, this library has been immensely popular. Within a couple years of disruptor's release, practically every (java based) trading firm was using them. I've even seen c++ implementations, only vaguely resembling this library, being referred to as 'disruptors.'

Beyond the library, the original (and subsequent) presentations by the authors popularized the concepts of "mechanical sympathy" (understand the abstraction layer beneath what you are currently working in) and introduced a whole new set of developers to modern CPUs, thinking about cache lines, etc.