Virtual Machine

ALSO CALLED: Virtual Private Servers
DEFINITION: A virtual machine (VM) is an environment, usually a program or operating system, which does not physically exist but is created within another environment. In this context, a VM is called a "guest" while the environment it runs within is called a "host." Virtual machines are often created to execute an instruction set different than that of the host environment. One host environment  … 
Definition continues below.

VIRTUAL MACHINE DEFINITION (continued): …  can often run multiple VMs at once. Because VMs are separated from the physical resources they use, the host environment is often able to dynamically assign those resources among them.The phrase "virtual machine" is commonly used to describe Sun Microsystems' Java runtime environment, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), in which Java-specific commands are interpreted. The JVM is a virtual machine in that it executes code compiled specifically for it – known as bytecode – and abstracts use of resources for this bytecode. The Java programming language does not rely on platform-specific … 
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