Is there any .Net JIT Support from chip vendors?

Question

I know that ARM actually has some support for Java and SUN obviously, but I haven't really references seen any chip vendor supporting a .Net JIT compiler. I know IBM and Intel both support C compilers, as well as TI and many of the embedded chip vendors. When you think of it, all a JIT compiler is, is the last stages of compilation and optimization which you would think would be a good match for a chip vendor's expertize. Perhaps a standardized Plug In compilation engine for the VM would make sense.

Microsoft is targeting .Net to embedded Windows platforms as well, so they are fair game.

Pete

Answer 1

The Meridian CPU supports the .NET micro framework directly.

Answer 2

JIT compilation happens once at startup. Why optimise this? Optimising the garbage collector through caches, possibly assisting the program with dedicated CPU registers and instructions for performing sweeps and allocation would increase program speed.

It's interesting though because after your .Net code is JIT compiled it's using techniques which are already optimised for performing these things, such as double dereference pointer instructions, and I'm certain that the CLR would have been implemented to keep commonly used parts of the framework in registers for speed etc.

But lets hope that whole "competition" thing thats meant to happen between AMD and Intel brings this on. If you're buying a server for a java or .Net implementation and your server with chip X will run 10% faster at the same cost because garbage collected langagues are optimised for it, which would you buy?

Answer 3

From 1.7USD/Mil on

Answer 4

A better question here is "Are there any processors out there that directly implement the .Net IL as their machine instructions". IL is a form of assembler code, and one wonder why we don't see hardware that support this instruction set directly, if it did then we would not need any JIT compilation.

Answer 5

You have not specifically or clearly said which platform is of interest. dotnet is very much tied to the windows platform which itself requires x86. That said unless intel add some emulation layer into the die the answer is no. .dotnet without windows is worthless.