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Coding a Virtual Machine in C
Rating: 5.0 out of 5(2 ratings)
152 students

Coding a Virtual Machine in C

A real-world project for intermediate-level C coders, wanting to take the next step and learn how to write your own VM.
Last updated 2/2026
English
English [Auto],

What you'll learn

  • Learn how to program a virtual machine from scratch
  • Learn to write your own simple Assembly language
  • Learn how CPUs and memory works, under the hood.
  • Learn to structure, plan and follow-through on a real-world programming project

Course content

4 sections19 lectures13h 0m total length
  • Part 145:00

    Code a 16-bit virtual machine with a virtual CPU, memory, six registers, and a custom assembly language featuring mov, nop, and halt, plus 65 kilobytes of code and stack memory.

  • Part 245:00

    Build a bare-bones virtual machine in C, focusing on the vm constructor, memory allocation, program copying, error handling, and integrating a mem copy in birch utils.

  • Part 345:00

    Guide students to code a virtual machine in C, constructing a program as a series of instructions such as move and no op, using a map function to size instructions.

  • Part 445:00

    Allocate and zero argument memory, copy instructions into the virtual machine, and assemble a small program. Add a break line to separate code from data for loading and gdb debugging.

  • Part 544:59

    In part 5, the lecture upgrades the virtual machine to C23 with GCC 14.2, adds a HALT instruction, and implements an execute loop with memory layout and error handling.

  • Part 645:00

    Define 16-bit arguments for vm instructions, capturing a1 and a2 and updating the vm registers. Refine the execute loop and implement move to set ax from a1.

  • Part 745:00

    Debug a 16-bit virtual machine in C by implementing a halt and correct program counter updates to avoid segmentation faults. Refine break address handling and pointer arithmetic for correct execution.

  • Part 845:00

    Part 8 tackles converting 16-bit to 32-bit addresses, aligning PP and BRK, and debugging the VM's fetch-execute loop, including IPO, IP, and size handling to avoid segmentation faults.

  • Part 924:41

    Explore coding a virtual machine in C by validating opcode handling, memory operations, and instruction flow. See how values move into AX and prepare for a stack and more instructions.

Requirements

  • You need an intermediate-level understanding of the C language

Description

Code a virtual machine in C
In this extremely exciting new project we will be coding our own Virtual Machine. That means creating our own virtual CPU with registers and our own simple Assembly language. We will also have virtual memory (a stack and a code segment) and possibly some IO in form of a virtual serial port or a floppy drive.

We will be coding everything from scratch and not make use of any external libraries/dependencies. Except my own. We will barely use the standard C library at all - if we need a function, we make it. In this episode you will learn a lot about pointers, how to structure a big project and make design choices. You will also learn quite a lot about structures and different types of data structures. And of course, you'll learn the ins and outs of how a computer really works, at the low-level.


-Why learn C from dr Jonas Birch and not from the other ten Udemy instructors?

Experience in the C language. When dr Birch was 18 years old and had been coding C for five years, he was traveling all over Europe, invited to different coding and security conferences, giving lectures about C and security. Since then he has coded C almost every day - for an additional 20 years!

Experience in teaching. Dr Birch has been teaching the C language (live) almost full time the last six years, helping hundreds and hundreds of students learn the mother of all languages - in Linux.

Very soothening voice and amazing sound quality. Dr Birch has a very dark, relaxing voice which is very easy to listen to (a really underestimated feature). He is recording in a professional recording studio with enterprise level microphone and equipment, which makes for a very good listening experience.


Enroll Now or try out the free sample lectures.

Who this course is for:

  • This course is for mid-level programmers, wanting to take the next steps towards an advanced level.