Virtual Machines

Chapter Three Process Virtual Machines

Atypical computer user works with a large number of programs that coexist in a system environment consisting of one or more processors, memory, a file system, and a number of peripheral devices. The user invokes and interacts with the programs by employing the interface supported by libraries and the operating system. An important restriction, however, is that the user can run only programs that have been compiled for the user’s operating system and the processor’s instruction set. One of the important applications of virtual machines is to circumvent this restriction and allow the user to run programs compiled for other systems. As we shall see, a number of VM architectures can provide this capability, ...