I would like to share with the .NET community, the NetAsm opensource project available on codeplex.
NetAsm provides a hook to the .NET JIT compiler and enables to inject your own native code in replacement of the default CLR JIT compilation. With this library, it is possible, at runtime, to inject x86 assembler code in CLR methods with the speed of a pure CLR method call and without the cost of Interop/PInvoke calls. With this library, it is possible for example to inject highly optimized code (using SSE, MMX) inside a method, in replacement of the default generated native code by the JIT compiler.
This library could be particularly useful for game using .NET platform (XNA for example), as it provides a way to integrate fast native code for methods that need highly optimized native code. The current features of NetAsm are:

• Runs on x86 32bit Microsoft .NET platform with 2.0+ CLR runtime (x64 may be supported in the future
• Provides three different native code injection techniques: Static, DLL, and Dynamic
  • Static code injection: The native code is stored in an attribute of the method.
  • Dll code injection: this method is similar to the DllImport mechanism but CLR methods are directly bind to the DLL function, without going through the interop layers.
  • Dynamic code injection: you can generate native code dynamically with a callback interface that is called by the JIT when compilation of a method is occurring. It means that you can compile a method "on the fly". You have also access to the IL code of the method being compiled.
• Supports for debugging static and dynamic code injection.
• Supports for different calling conventions: StdCall, FastCall, ThisCall, Cdecl. Default calling convention is CLRCall
• NetAsm can be used inside any .NET language (you can run assembler code inside VB!)
• Very small library <100Ko.

For additional information and documentation, please visit the NetAsm codeplex site.

Quote:Original post by Ravyne
Odd question, but is there any chance that the approach could be modified to work on the Xbox 360, which runs a version of the .net compact framework and omits the emit instruction, or does the approach rely on something x86 specific? I realize its a very different architecture, but the CPU is fairly well understood and if it were possible it would go a long way towards getting the most out of the 360 (such as the VMX128 units).

I'm not sure if there are other protections in place, in fact, there probably are, but it would definitely be something to look into.

Quote:Original post by bubu LV
Would it be possible also something like this with delegates? Like calling delegate would directly bind to given address of some native function without interop layers. I'm thinking here about usage of OpenGL extensions and wglGetProcAddress returned function pointer.

1. The native code injected is considered as CLR code and not as unmanaged, so there are some restrictions when using external functions that could call OS functions (for example, even if NetAsm could call printf from msvcrt.dll, it prints nothing because the CLR is supposed to be in CLR mode and not unmanaged) : Interop has a different behavior as you leave the CLR runtime to the unmanaged runtime (the VM does a couple of things to insure the transition, thread contexts...etc.).
2. Also, NetAsm doesn't fully support other calling conventions (StdCall, FastCall, ThisCall, Cdecl). The default supported calling convention is ClrCall - which doesn't do any conversion call between the CLR call and the code injected-

Quote:Original post by Fiddler
Is there any chance that this could work on the Mono JIT? What would it take for that to happen?

Quote:How easy is it to add support for different platforms (e.g. x86_64)?

Quote:"The native code injected is considered as CLR code and not as unmanaged" - would this restrict calling e.g. OpenGL functions?

Quote:Original post by AlexandreMutel

Quote:Original post by Fiddler
Is there any chance that this could work on the Mono JIT? What would it take for that to happen?

We have to wait... i have just asked this to Miguel de Icaza. It would be nice but i'm not sure it's possible or even it would be made possible by Mono team dev...

Quote:

Quote:How easy is it to add support for different platforms (e.g. x86_64)?

I don't have currently any way to test such platform, although the port of NetAsm to x64 shouldn't be hard. If anyone is interested in helping me on this, i would appreciate.

Quote:

Quote:"The native code injected is considered as CLR code and not as unmanaged" - would this restrict calling e.g. OpenGL functions?

You have to test it. I'm not sure it's going to work.