Microsoft is doing some interesting research in the OS space looking at how they could build a managed operating system to live up to users demands.
“OS research is ready for a revolution. Modern systems are bound by abstractions largely defined in the early 1970s. OS research has not kept pace with changes in application composition or security needs of everyday usage scenarios. To a lesser degree, OS research has not exploited the exponential evolution of hardware exemplified by Moore’s Law. For example, operating systems are largely ignorant of the proliferation of processing cores beyond the CPU.”
Obviously these are long range plans but it is necessary research. I’d definitely love to be a fly on the wall for a few of the discussions happening in those corridors.