Skip the OS and Get 40 million Requests Per Second in Lua
highscalability.com
highscalability.com
But with modern websoftware which has layers of layers of software between it and the metal.. Even if you are 100% prefect you have layers taxing your execution. This is provable via a deconstructive proof.
I've often wondered what it would be like to double back on history and make a new OS that works as nothing more then a 'Tape Header'. Because in modern times most OS's exist only as a virtual environment. This environment runs a single demon, on a single shard of a larger machine.