The Dalvik Virtual Machine (DVM) is a discontinued process virtual machine that was used to execute applications written for the Android operating system in versions 4.4 "KitKat" and earlier[4]. It was designed and written by Dan Bornstein, who named it after the fishing village of Dalvík in Iceland[3][4].
DVM was a register-based virtual machine, unlike the stack-based Java Virtual Machine (JVM)[2][3]. This allowed it to use fewer, more complex instructions and optimize performance on low-memory, low-power devices like smartphones[2][4]. DVM used its own compact bytecode format (.dex files) which was typically smaller than Java's .class files[4].
The key features of DVM included[1][3][4]:
Ability to run multiple app instances efficiently
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