Virtual Machine

A Virtual Machine is a software system that replicates a computer.

• Example(s):
  • Java Virtual Machine.
• See: Virtual Appliance, Operating System, Programming Language, LLVM Compiler System, Docker Virtualization System, Cloud Computing.

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References

2013

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine
  • A virtual machine (VM) is a software-based, fictive computer. Virtual machines may be based on specifications of a hypothetical computer or emulate the computer architecture and functions of a real world computer. The Virtual Machine runs programs in a Bytecode Interpreter (computing).
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine#Definitions
  • A virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (i.e. a computer) that executes programs like a physical machine. Virtual machines are separated into two major classifications, based on their use and degree of correspondence to any real machine:
    1. A system virtual machine provides a complete system platform which supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). These usually emulate an existing architecture, and are built with the purpose of either providing a platform to run programs where the real hardware is not available for use (for example, executing software on otherwise obsolete platforms), or of having multiple instances of virtual machines leading to more efficient use of computing resources, both in terms of energy consumption and cost effectiveness (known as hardware virtualization, the key to a cloud computing environment), or both.
    2. A process virtual machine (also, language virtual machine) is designed to run a single program, which means that it supports a single process. Such virtual machines are usually closely suited to one or more programming languages and built with the purpose of providing program portability and flexibility (amongst other things). An essential characteristic of a virtual machine is that the software running inside is limited to the resources and abstractions provided by the virtual machine — it cannot break out of its virtual environment.

2005

• (Clark et al., 2005) ⇒ Christopher Clark, Keir Fraser, Steven Hand, Jacob Gorm Hansen, Eric Jul, Christian Limpach, Ian Pratt, and Andrew Warfield. (2005). “Live Migration of Virtual Machines.” In: Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation.

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