emulation

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun Love of superiority; desire or ambition to equal or excel others; the instinct that incites to effort for the attainment of equal or superior excellence or estimation in any respect.
• noun Effort to equal or excel in qualities or actions; imitative rivalry, as of that which one admires in another or others: as, the emulation of great actions, or of the rich by the poor.
• noun Antagonistic rivalry; malicious or injurious contention; strife for superiority.
• noun Synonyms and Emulation, Competition, Rivalry. The natural love of superiority is known as emulation; in common use the word signifies the desire and the resulting endeavor to equal or surpass another or others in some quality, attainment, or achievement. It is intrinsically neutral both as to time and motive, but it is most frequently applied to the relations of contemporaries or associates, and to feelings and efforts of an honorable nature. Competition is the act of striving against others; the word is used only where the object to be attained is pretty clearly in mind, and that object is not mere superiority, but some definite thing: as, competition for a prize; competition in business. Rivalry, unless qualified by some favorable adjective, is generally a contest in which the competitors push their several interests in an ungenerous spirit, malignant feelings being easily a result. Rivalry may be general in its character: as, the rivalry between two states or cities; in such cases it may be friendly and honorable.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The endeavor to equal or to excel another in qualities or actions; an assiduous striving to equal or excel another; rivalry.
• noun Jealous rivalry; envy; envious contention.
• noun imitation (of an admired model) for the purpose of improving one's own qualities.
• noun (Computers) the imitation of the actions of a computer system or component, especially a processor, by means of a computer program, with the goal of predicting the behavior and performance characteristics of that system without actually manufacturing it.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The endeavor or desire to equal or excel someone else in qualities or actions.
• noun obsolete Jealous rivalry; envy; envious contention.
• noun computing Running a program or other software designed for a different system.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun ambition to equal or excel
• noun (computer science) technique of one machine obtaining the same results as another
• noun effort to equal or surpass another