What is Hypervisor?

Software that runs multiple virtual machines on one computer, allocating CPU, memory and devices to each guest OS and isolating them from one another. Also called a virtual machine monitor.

Field: OS & Hardware

Hypervisor in the explanations

Questions that mention Hypervisor (8)

  1. What is it called when a guest OS executes a privileged instruction, control passes to the hypervisor, and the hypervisor reproduces the instruction's effect on its behalf?
  2. What is the software called that runs multiple operating systems simultaneously on one computer, each as an independent virtual machine?
  3. In virtualization with nested paging (two-stage address translation), which describes what the hardware does?
  4. Which describes paravirtualization?
  5. Which correctly distinguishes containers from virtual machines?
  6. Which set of operating modes is defined by the RISC-V privileged architecture?
  7. What characterizes enclave-style TEEs such as Intel SGX?
  8. In confidential computing on the cloud, what is the purpose of CPU features that encrypt virtual machine memory (such as AMD SEV or Intel TDX)?

Related terms

Nested paging Copy-on-write Demand paging Device driver Remote attestation ASID Context switch Interrupt handler Interrupt vector table IOMMU

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