Is a Dalvik virtual machine instance created for each application?

android dalvik
Rockystech picture Rockystech · Nov 27, 2012 · Viewed 50.6k times · Source

Is a Dalvik virtual machine instance created for each application, or all Android applications share the same Dalvik virtual machine instance?

Answer

Sahil Mahajan Mj picture Sahil Mahajan Mj · Nov 27, 2012

Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently.

The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimised for minimal memory footprint.

The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included dx tool.

Also have a look at What is... The Dalvik Virtual Machine for detailed description about DVM.

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