virtual machine monitor (hypervisor) (VMM)

The Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), also known as a hypervisor, supports the simultaneous execution of several operating systems in a virtual machine( VM), whereby the various operating systems share the hardware resources of the computer.

In virtual machines, the resources of processors, memory units, input/output (I/O), DMA controllers and the resources of other components are transparently shared among the virtual machines. The VMM concepts are supported by the processors by adapting their architectures accordingly. Virtualization at processor level takes place with the Virtual Machine Extension (VMX) at Intel and with the Secure Virtual Machine( SVM) at AMD.