Prime examples in IT

Hyperconverged blade

Most hyperconverged appliances are in rack unit form factor, most often 2U or 4U. If you want an example of a hyperconverged blade, the one that comes to mind is Pivot3 on Dell PowerEdge MSeries.

Non-IBM mainframes

If you want an example of a non-IBM mainframe, the two that come to mind are Unisys ClearPath Libra (formerly Burroughs Large Systems) and Dorado (a descendant of the UNIVAC).

The next non-IBM mainframe that comes to mind is Fujitsu GS21.

12U blade system

If you want a 12U blade chassis, the one that comes to mind is Huawei FusionServer E9000.

Layered and modular kernels

A prime example of a layered operating system is the THE multirprogramming system. Multics has a similar approach with hierarchical protection rings.

The prime example of a modular kernel is Solaris.

For the prime example of extensible operating system, VINO and SPIN are rivals.

CPU architectures

A prime example of register-based virtual machine is Dalvik, as opposed to Java which is stack-based.

Computer ideals

For desktop, workstation, and small to medium-business server: tower taller than wide and somewhat deeper than tall.

Four cores on desktop, laptop, or entry-level server.

RISC for mobile computers, CISC for desktops and servers. ARMv8-A for smartphones and tablets, x86 for desktops and servers, and either ARM or x86 for laptops.

2U or 4U rack for medium to large business server.

Half or somewhat less preferred full height blade in a 10U blade system for enterprise.

In NUMA, either have four nodes each with two processors for a total of eight processors, or eight hot-plug SMP units each with four processors or 16 hot-plug SMP units each with two processors for a total of 32.

Flash memory for mobile computers and laptops, HDD storage for desktops and servers. Maybe dual drive SSHD and SSD for all-in-one desktops and hybrid-flash arrays for tower desktops and servers, but dual drive works for tower desktops as well.

Hybrid-flash array with a few small NVMe SSD’s and many large SATA or SAS HDD’s. The other idea is 3D XPoint paired with quad level cell SSD’s. Maybe could do mixed system with some arrays hybrid flash and 3D XPoint and other arrays hybrid flash and HDD.

Network attached storage: combined file+block, with Fibre Channel over Ethernet and NFS.

RAID6, RAID5E, RAID3, or RAID10. Not RAID1, RAID2, RAID01, RAID100, or RAID-DP. Maybe RAID5 nested in JBOD. RAID4 for smaller arrays and RAID6 for larger arrays.

Dynamically extendable monolithic with procedure call for local OS or on host, and multi-server microkernel with message passing for distributed single system image. Another idea is multiple monolithic kernels on top of an exokernel.

Local procedure calls and remote message passing. Synchronous message passing between closely coupled nodes, asynchronous message passing between disperse nodes.

Microkernel for host of type II hypervisor, and monolithic kernel for guest.

In a massively parallel processor array, one RISC massively manycore processor per node.

Non-technical:

Tiered enterprise software licensing: open-core with permissive or copyleft license (the best are three-clause BSD, Apache 2.0, Eclipse Public License 2.0, and LGPL2.1+) and proprietary commercial version(s).