What does the Visual Studio “Any CPU” target mean?

Question

I have some confusion related to the .NET platform build options in Visual Studio 2008.

What is the \"Any CPU\" compilation target, and what sort of files does it ge

Answer 1

Check out the article Visual Studio .NET Platform Target Explained.

The default setting, "Any CPU", means that the assembly will run natively on the CPU it is currently running on. Meaning, it will run as 64-bit on a 64-bit machine and 32-bit on a 32-bit machine. If the assembly is called from a 64-bit application, it will perform as a 64-bit assembly and so on.

The above link has been reported to be broken, so here is another article with a similar explanation: What AnyCPU Really Means As Of .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 11