What is CEF?
CEF stands for Common Executable Format. CEF is Microsoft’s solution to the problem of multiple processor types. CEF provides a single target format for Windows CE executable files. The first time a CEF file is executed on a CE device, CE converts the CEF file to native code. This conversion only occurs once and happens very quickly. The resulting code is native to the processor. Microsoft’s goal is to have the executable’s performance be at least 80% of native, fully optimized code, and to be only about 20% larger than a native executable.