[pjmlp]

Looking at the way mainframes work, with their higher level languages, JIT compilers at kernel level, object databases, type 1 hypervisors, ....

It is quite interesting to see mainstream OSes increasingly get adopting all those features.

[Animats]

Very, very slowly. Microprocessors still have DMA instead of mainframe-like "channels", although we're starting to see MMUs on the I/O side. With channels, devices can't blither all over memory and neither driver nor device need be trusted.