There is a finite and relatively narrow range of ratios of CPU, memory, and network throughput in both modern cloud offerings and bare hardware configurations.
Obviously it's possible to build, for example, a machine with 2 cores, a 10Gbps network link, and a single HDD that would falsify my statement.
But the workload matters. Even the comment in the article doesn't completely make sense for me in that way -- if your workload is 50 operations per byte transferred versus 5000 operations per byte transferred, there is a considerable difference in hardware requirements.