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The term virtual machine initially described a 1960s operating system concept: a software abstraction with the looks of a computer system’s hardware (real machine). Forty years later, the term encompasses a large range of abstractions?for example, Java virtual machines that don’t match an existing real machine. Despite the variations, in all definitions the virtual machine is a target for a programmer or compilation system. In other words, software is written to run on the virtual machine.
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Mendel Rosenblum (2004) studied this question.
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