Virtual Machine
An isolated environment, often with its own Instruction Set Architecture, in order to perform various operations; all interactions with a host system must go through specific calls in the virtual machine.
Often interprets an Intermediate Representation (IR))).md) produced by an Interpreter
Common Examples
- JVM (Java Virtual Machine)
- CLR
At a larger level, the same concept applies to Virtualisation systems like Virtualbox, KVM, or Hyper-V, which simply expose the host system’s ISA (e.g. x86) but keep it isolated from the host operating system.