"This sounds interesting, but why should this be a new piece of hardware as opposed to a new OS service?"
Because the entire point is that CPUs are too slow by themselves, even without the OS, let alone with it. While you were context-switching into this OS server you missed the chance to do 10 IOPs give or take an order of magnitude.
Yet the OS really can't go anywhere. We can sometimes poke a hole here and sometimes poke a hole there but in general they're there for good reasons and not going anywhere, just as no matter what crazy things we bodge in to our computers "things like CPUs" aren't going anywhere either, and my guess is they're likely to stay pretty "central", too.
Because the entire point is that CPUs are too slow by themselves, even without the OS, let alone with it. While you were context-switching into this OS server you missed the chance to do 10 IOPs give or take an order of magnitude.
Yet the OS really can't go anywhere. We can sometimes poke a hole here and sometimes poke a hole there but in general they're there for good reasons and not going anywhere, just as no matter what crazy things we bodge in to our computers "things like CPUs" aren't going anywhere either, and my guess is they're likely to stay pretty "central", too.