Are there any vendors providing MSIL / CLR on hardware?

Question

I have a set of MSIL / CLR applications (written in C#). I am looking for a way to burn them onto a pure hardware platform. I've seen that Altera has an embedded processor called NIOS II that appears to support eCLR (embedded common language runtime), but it's just a processor and not something I would consider end market product.

Can anyone recommend an end-market product that can be incorporated into commodity hardware (standard 1-4u rack mounted systems with PCI and PCI-E interfaces) that can run MSIL / CLR applications. If there's nothing thats equally helpful to know.

Answer 1

the Mono toolset include static compiler, which compiles your bytecode down to machine language. It's being used to port C# code to iPhone and Xbox, precisely because those platforms don't support JITs (mainly for security reasons).

maybe this could open your options.

Answer 2

I don't personally know of a hardware implementation on the market, i've seen a couple academic paper's on the feasibility of such a system. I doubt it will really "work" much the same way as Jazelle Java acceleration on ARM chips is hardly ever used. It would require a hardware architecture as well as a software stack compatible with CLR, meaning getting in bed with Microsoft. Jazelle has a similar problem, there isn't a good VM with support for it, at least with Java being open sourced there is hope. I'd be interested in knowing is Altera actually have a full stack or if they are just advertising acceleration the same way the Jazelle folks do. Its certainly something that I recommend you dig into.

Have you considered mono? You should be able to use a light weight linux install + mono on an embedded computer (Single Board Computer or a mini-itx embedded computer) and get something similar to what i think your looking for.

Answer 3

Yea, a rackmount PC server running Windows! What's your cost and performance budget?

Answer 4

In fact I am almost pretty sure that today there isn't any processor doing that.

But maybe you are just looking for an hardware platform with the .NET Framework In that case you should have a look to these options:

• the .NET Micro Framework for really small application, and some hardware who use it: http://www.microsoft.com/netmf/hardware/default.mspx
• Windows Embedded whit the .Net compact framework for small applications
• Or if you really need more "power", you really should think about a PC with Windows or Mono on linux.

Answer 5

I found only one solution that fit the criteria of my question. KW-Software provides a solution called ProConOS which runs on the Altera NIOS II. With this solution, you can write MSIL code (C#, C++, VB) which can be executed on hardware. One facet that I do like about the solution is that it does ahead of time compilation (effectively static compilation for the target architecture) rather than JIT.