interpreter vs. compiled

[Duncan Booth]

Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

> 1. Portability: The Microsoft C# JIT compiler runs under Windows .NET
> on x86/amd64 and maybe it64 and what else?  Just porting .NET to run
> 0n Linux on the same processors was/is a bit task.  Does MONO have a
> JIT also? 

Technically there is no such thing as a Microsoft C# JIT compiler: the C# 
compiler targets IL and the JIT compilers convert IL to the native machine,  
but C# is just one of the frontend compilers you could use.

Microsoft do JIT compilers for .Net Compact Framework that target ARM, 
MIPS, SHx and x86. The Mono JIT supports:

s390, s390x (32 and 64 bits) Linux
SPARC(32) Solaris, Linux
PowerPC Linux, Mac OSX
x86 Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, OS X
x86-64: AMD64 and EM64T (64 bit) Linux, Solaris
IA64 Itanium2 (64 bit) Linux
ARM: little and big endian Linux (both the old and the new ABI)
Alpha Linux
MIPS Linux
HPPA Linux

(from http://www.mono-project.com/Supported_Platforms)


So I'd say .Net scores pretty highly on the portability stakes. (Although 
of course code written for .Net might not do so well).

-- 
Duncan Booth http://kupuguy.blogspot.com