As you may have guessed already, JVM does not know anything about the Java language and source code. It only knows how to read bytecode. It reads the bytecodes and other information from .class files, transforms (interprets) the bytecodes into a sequence of binary code instructions specific to the current platform (where JVM is running), and passes the resulting binary code to the microprocessor that executes it. When talking about this transformation, programmers often refer to it as a Java process, or just process.
The JVM is often referred to as a JVM instance. That is because every time a java command is executed, a new instance of JVM is launched, dedicated to running the particular application as a separate process with its own allocated memory (the size of the memory is set as a default value or passed in as a command option). Inside this Java process, multiple...
