JIT or AOT for NetMF

NETMF & Gadgeteer
1

Hello,

wouldn’t it be cool, when NetMF would support JIT or AOT with much faster execution speed?

Maybe some of you could vote for this, too:

http://netmf.codeplex.com/workitem/2368

Regards,

Alex

2

This topic is not new, and I’m quite sure there are already 2 or 3 feature requests for this in CodePlex.
The problem is that tiny devices (low on Flash and RAM) can not use it, because byte code is often (or most of the time) bigger than IL code.
Also there is a lot of work to get the needed compiler(s) up and running.
Voted anyway.

3

I think you mean machine code is larger than IL (which is a form of bytecode). While this is accurate, and historically, this is the reason that an AOT compiler was impractical, this is almost certainly no longer an issue, and never was with devices with external flash and RAM.

JIT is probably still impractical, but we’d rather have AOT anyway.

4

Thanks for voting!

My view of things: C# and full version of .NET is very popular because of its great features, but if it had been much slower than other languages nobody would use it e.g. on the Desktop.

I run some tests with Raspberry Pi / MONO / C# and toggling a Pin was possible with about 6Mhz !!! without any C/C++ code…

compared to NetMF, where hardware is not much cheaper it is huge! Yes I know, one cannot compare those systems, but if the focus of NetMF is and stays only highlevel, then maybe it could be replaced with those very cheap Linux boards, which also could do those high level things. Another Option is maybe to use Windows CE, where C# performance is very good, too.

For Low Level people have to stay at C/C++…

I think we need also C# in the Low Level Microcontrollers area…