Having read the article, while interesting (and important), Intel's Vanderpool is scarcely the "one of the decade's most significant breakthroughs in computer technology".
IBM mainframes since 1981 have had a function known as "Interpretive Execution" which is used the same way. On October 21, 1981 IBM announced VM/XA Migration Aid and the SIE instruction (which provides the Interpretive Execution function) for the 3084 mainframe. This was further enhanced in announcements on June 11, 1987 with the VM/XA System Product and the Multiple High Performance Guest Support facility (MHPGS) and February 15, 1988 as the Processor Resource/Systems Manager (PR/SM) which provides the Logical Partitioning facility (the first ever reference to Logical Partitions to my knowledge). The current VM product, z/VM, makes extensive use of this function to provide support for running a great many guests (in some environments 100s) and the current LPAR support provides for 60 Logical Partitions on the z990 mainframe. The IBM Systems Journal published an article on SIE in 1991 at http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/301/ibmsj3001E.pdf Regards, Jim
