Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 656 pages
- Published by: Morgan Kaufmann
- Edition: 1st Edition June 3, 2005
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1558609105
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1558609105
-
Book Dimensions:
9.3 x 7.1 x 1.6 inches
- Weighs: 3.2 pounds
Book Description
Examines and unifies the entire field of virtual machine technology.
Product Description
Virtual Machine technology applies the concept of virtualization to an entire machine, circumventing real machine compatibility constraints and hardware resource constraints to enable a higher degree of
software portability and flexibility. Virtual machines are rapidly becoming an essential element in computer system design. They provide system security, flexibility, cross-platform compatibility, reliability, and resource efficiency. Designed to solve problems in combining and using major computer system components, virtual machine technologies play a key role in many disciplines, including operating systems,
programming languages, and computer architecture. For example, at the process level, virtualizing technologies support dynamic program translation and platform-independent network computing. At the system level, they support multiple operating system environments on the same hardware platform and in servers.
Historically, individual virtual machine techniques have been developed within the specific disciplines that employ them (in some cases they arent even referred to as virtual machines), making it difficult to see their common underlying relationships in a cohesive way. In this text, Smith and Nair take a new approach by looking at virtual machines as a unified discipline. Pulling together cross-cutting technologies allows virtual machine implementations to be studied and engineered in a well-structured manner. Topics include instruction set emulation, dynamic program translation and optimization, high level virtual machines (including Java and CLI), and system virtual machines for both single-user systems and servers.
* looks at virtual machine technologies across the disciplines that use themoperating systems,
programming languages and computer architecturedefining a new and unified discipline.
* Reviewed by principle researchers at
Microsoft, HP, and by other industry research groups.
* Written by two authors who combine several decades of expertise in computer system research and development, both in academia and industry.
Reader ReviewsA good first book on VMs. Starts with general foundations, then overviews both JVM and CLR. More of an overview than an indepth book though (which, for an introduction, is not bad, so I'm not complaining). One thing I could do w/o though is a fair amount of hype about how VMs are great and so on. First, there's nothing new about them, they've been in existence for decades (it's just at the time MS believed that the future belongs to DDE); second, it can be argued that their current entry into the mainstream is due more to commercial interest and accompanying marketing hype than technical merit; third and last -- I'm tired of pretense excitement about this or that nine-days wonder's being a silver bullet, the Final Great Thing That Solves All Problems. I've seen too many of them appear in blasts of glory and be gone w/o trace within a couple of years despite all MS (or, in our case, Sun) self-serving clairvoyantry. We'll see, says I; meantime, less propaganda would be nice. But overall, the book's OK though, a good place to start if curious. Btw, there's another one, by Iain Craig, that, I think is even better. PS. As always, I warn the reader about the below reviewer, W.Boudville. Check his reviews page: he posts like a dozen exclusively positive reviews per day, every day, going back to the beginning of time: he cannot possibly have read one tenth of the books he's reviewed. Probably a "hired hand"; I smell a rat.
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