PCs Join the Virtualization Fray

In broad terms, virtualization for the PC is the same as other forms of virtualization - masking the complexities of one layer in a structural 'Stack' from the other layer(s) with which it is normally tightly integrated and thus dependent upon. With PCs, the three primary components of that stack are the hardware, operating system and applications, and virtualization involves abstracting these layers from one another. As a result, there are two types of virtualization for PCs - one that abstracts or decouples the operating system from the underlying hardware (called "Machine Virtualization" or "OS Virtualization" or just "PC Virtualization") and one that decouples the applications from the operating system (called "Application virtualization").