VCPU

Virtual Central Processing Unit

A CPU that is presented to a virtual machine (VM) as a virtualized hardware resource. A vCPU represents a single CPU core in the physical host, and it is used by the VM to execute instructions and perform computing tasks.

When you launch a virtual machine (instance) on a cloud computing service like AWS or Azure, you can specify the number of vCPUs that the instance will have access to. Each vCPU is a thread of a physical CPU core, and the total number of vCPUs that a VM can use is determined by the host’s physical CPU and the licensing restrictions of the virtualization software.

Each vCPU is scheduled to execute instructions on a physical CPU core. The Hypervisor’s scheduler is responsible for managing the allocation of physical CPU cores to the vCPUs. It does so by creating time slices for each vCPU, which allows the vCPU to access the physical CPU for a short period of time.

The vCPU is a virtualized version of the physical CPU, and it can be used by the operating system running in the VM as if it were a real CPU. Most cloud providers and virtualization technologies allow you to scale the number of vCPUs up or down as needed, so you can match the capacity of your vCPUs to the demands of your workloads.

It is worth noting that vCPUs are a shared resource, so the performance of a vCPU will depend on the number of other VMs on the host, and the activity of those VMs.

• Abbreviation: VCPU