[Mono-list] Re: Time problems on Mono

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 01:48 -0800, Jordi wrote:
> Sorry for my ignorance but what's the difference between Mono JIT and
> Mono Interpreter??.

You've hit on it already.  The interpreter (mint) is slower than
molasses in January, while the JIT (mono) is fast.

More accurately, the JIT is a JIT, converting the CIL into machine code
optimized for your particular processor, which executes directly on the
processor.  Once JIT is complete, there is *no* execution overhead
(except for GC, which is arguably a separate but related issue).  The
interpreter, on the other hand, doesn't do that.  It instead interprets
each CIL instruction, with no optimization at all.

It's like the difference between running a shell script and a C program.

 - Jon