They've published papers about it -- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/configu... -- they're giving talks about it -- Mark Russinovich was here a few weeks ago with a very long talk. Doug Burger and Derek Chiou are leading a lot of these efforts, and they're absolutely for real.
I'm not sure I agree with them that this is the right path forward (but they're smart and know their stuff, so I'm probably wrong), but it's absolutely for real.