The Android platform's virtual machine. The Dalvik VM is an
interpreter-only virtual machine that executes files in the Dalvik
Executable (.dex) format, a format that is optimized for efficient storage
and memory-mappable execution. The virtual machine is register-based, and
it can run classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been
transformed into its native format using the included "dx" tool.
The VM runs on top of Posix-compliant operating systems, which it relies
on for underlying functionality (such as threading and low level memory
management). The Dalvik core class library is intended to provide a
familiar development base for those used to programming with Java Standard
Edition, but it is geared specifically to the needs of a small mobile
device.
