Computer Security Art and Science, 2nd Edition

Appendix D

Virtual Machines

Virtual memory provides the illusion of physical memory. The abstraction allows a process to assume that its memory space both is contiguous and begins at location 0. This simplifies the process’s view of memory and hides the underlying physical locations of the process’s memory. The physical memory corresponding to the virtual memory need not be contiguous. Indeed, some of the locations in virtual memory may have no corresponding physical addresses until the process references them.

Like virtual memory, a virtual machine provides the illusion of a physical machine. The abstraction allows operating systems to assume that they are running directly on the hardware. This allows one to run the operating system, and allows ...