According to Google’s Android documentation, the Dalvik VM is an interpreter-only virtual machine that executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format, a format that is optimized for efficient storage and memory-mappable execution. The virtual machine is register-based, and it can run classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into its native format.
A virtual machine optimized for mobile devices that was designed and written by Dan Bornstein and other Google engineers. Dalvik is a part of the software stack that makes up the Android platform.
