[virtmach] VMs in the "real" world?

[Ian Piumarta]

Folks,

A couple of months ago, Stephen Pelc wrote:

> There are a couple of simplistic papers about the VFX code generator
> on our web site, but this *is* a commercial product ...

Now I'm curious to know just how widespread VMs (or any kind of runtime
code generators) are in the "real" world.  Where do they crop up?  Who
uses them?  Why?

(I was talking with somebody who makes network routers and they mentioned
that there's a VM inside their boxes.  That was a [pleasant] surprise to
me: outside of active networks [or packet filtering] I wouldn't have
expected to find a VM in a commercial router.)

Regards,

Ian

PS: The "Inside VFX" paper is interesting and although there are no
    compilation times reported in it I'll bet this thing is *fast*.