I didn't notice how old this article was until I saw the mention of KrakenJS being open sourced soon.

It's been open sourced for awhile (http://krakenjs.com/) and is a nice way to get some conventions when you are working across teams on a nodejs project.

I'd be interested in hearing the 'why' this was faster on reduced hardware.

You can read more on Walmart with nodejs to find out the same story.