Compiling MSIL to Native Code

Before Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) can be executed, it must be converted by a .NET Framework just-in-time (JIT) compiler to native code, which is CPU-specific code that runs on the same computer architecture as the JIT compiler. Because the common language runtime supplies a JIT compiler for each supported CPU architecture, developers can write a set of MSIL that can be JIT-compiled and executed on computers with different architectures. However, your managed code will run only on a specific operating system if it calls platform-specific, native APIs, or a platform-specific class library