A virtual machine (VM) is a simulation of a machine (abstract or real) that is usually different from the target machine (where it is being simulated on). Virtual machines may be based on specifications of a hypothetical computer or emulate the architecture and functioning of a real world computer.
Read more about Virtual Machine: Definitions, List of Hardware With Virtual Machine Support, List of Virtual Machine Software
Famous quotes containing the words virtual and/or machine:
“Neither dead nor alive, the hostage is suspended by an incalculable outcome. It is not his destiny that awaits for him, nor his own death, but anonymous chance, which can only seem to him something absolutely arbitrary.... He is in a state of radical emergency, of virtual extermination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)