Hyper-V is coming to Windows 8 Client

In building Windows 8 we worked to enable Hyper-V, the machine virtualization
technology that has been part of the last 2 releases of Windows Server, to
function on the client OS as well. In brief, Hyper-V lets you run more than one
32-bit or 64-bit x86 operating system at the same time on the same computer.
Instead of working directly with the computer’s hardware, the operating systems
run inside of a virtual machine (VM).

Hyper-V
enables developers to easily maintain multiple test environments and provides a
simple mechanism to quickly switch between these environments without incurring
additional hardware costs. For example, we release pre-configured
virtual machines containing old versions of Internet Explorer to support
web developers. The IT administrator gets the additional benefit of virtual
machine parity and a common management experience across Hyper-V in Windows
Server and Windows Client. We also know that many of you use virtualization to
try out new things without risking changes to the PC you are actively using.

Read more on this blog:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/07/bringing-hyper-v-to-windows-8.aspx