In the past, an HMC was always an independent physical computer (appliance) based on Intel hardware and a Linux operating system. In the meantime, an HMC can also be a virtual computer (appliance) that is operated as a guest on a virtualization host. Such a hardware management console is often referred to as a virtual hardware management console or vHMC for short. Newer physical HMCs are now based on a POWER architecture, specifically the models 7063-CR1 and 7063-CR2. The previous models based on Intel hardware (7042 and 7310) are no longer officially supported by IBM.