The concept of virtual memory dates back to the introduction of the IBM 370 series mainframes in the 1970s.

One of the main differences from the previous IBM 360 series (developed in the 1960s) was a dynamic address translation (DAT) logic unit, that took an abstract (virtual) memory request and converted it quickly, via a lookup table, to a physical address.

Application level software developers were presented with a finite virtual application storage space, which was much larger than the actual physical memory, and did not have to consider the DAT process in software design.

Sometimes the physical memory would not actually be in the main core (extended random access memory). Under these conditions a page of physical memory was loaded just in time, often from a direct access storage device (DASD), while the initial request waited.

In the emerging modern context of intelligent distributed data we are investigating the possibility of a network based version of virtual memory.

Our preliminary version of the new model is optimistically termed "infinite virtual machine" (IVM) and might be used as the basis for a very large object model (VLOM) or similar extensible architecture.