Article | REF: H1585 V1

Software virtualization: from real to abstract virtual machines

Authors: Bertil FOLLIOT, Gaël THOMAS

Publication date: February 10, 2009

You do not have access to this resource.
Click here to request your free trial access!

Already subscribed? Log in!


Français

2. Operating system

The role of an operating system is to virtualize a machine's peripherals and memory. The aim is to provide uniform access to hardware resources. The role of an operating system is not to virtualize the processor itself, as its purpose is to maintain good performance. Indeed, running an application natively on a processor is always faster than interpreting or re-compiling machine code at runtime. What's more, advanced languages partially mask different processor architectures. For example, a program written in C can be compiled for different processors, provided there is a compiler for the processor. So the same C program can be compiled for a 32-bit Pentium or 32-bit AMD processor, but also for a PowerPC, Sparc, 64-bit AMD or M68K processor. On the other hand, access to the processor is virtualized by an operating system to simulate the execution of several independent applications at the...

You do not have access to this resource.

Exclusive to subscribers. 97% yet to be discovered!

You do not have access to this resource.
Click here to request your free trial access!

Already subscribed? Log in!


The Ultimate Scientific and Technical Reference

A Comprehensive Knowledge Base, with over 1,200 authors and 100 scientific advisors
+ More than 10,000 articles and 1,000 how-to sheets, over 800 new or updated articles every year
From design to prototyping, right through to industrialization, the reference for securing the development of your industrial projects

This article is included in

Software technologies and System architectures

This offer includes:

Knowledge Base

Updated and enriched with articles validated by our scientific committees

Services

A set of exclusive tools to complement the resources

Practical Path

Operational and didactic, to guarantee the acquisition of transversal skills

Doc & Quiz

Interactive articles with quizzes, for constructive reading

Subscribe now!

Ongoing reading
Operating system