Virtual Machine

Software that mimics the actions of a CPU, or other hardware devices, in utilizing a computer’s resources and resides as a protected memory space, usually on a hard disk. For example, in the context of a Java Virtual Machine, it executes Java applets in a web browser. Whereas different computer platforms may require different JVMs (due to differing operating systems) they all can execute Java code irrespective of the source program (the browser) being used.