Hardware Layer
The physical hardware is, generally speaking, up to the system designer. The .NET Micro Framework is portable to any 32 bit CPU with a reasonably modern C++ compiler. Based on popular demand the framework is currently built and tested on ARMv7m Architecture (e.g. Cortex-Mx) micro-controllers. However, other processors and operating systems are possible. In fact, the emulator that ships with the SDK is actually a port of the framework on top of Microsoft(R) Windows. Furthermore, third parties can, and have, built support for other processor architectures including big-endian as well as little-endian architectures including:
- ADI BlackFin
- SuperH 2
- ARMv6
The .NET Micro Framework does not require or use any virtual memory or Memory Management Unit (MMU), though if you have one in your hardware there are sometimes advantages to enabling it. (i.e. Many of the ARM7 and ARM9 micro architecture based SoCs required enabling the MMU to get the performance benefits of caching)