Portable Executable

Portable Executable (PE) is a file format for native executable code on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems, as well as in UEFI environments. It is used for native executables (.exe, .com), dynamic link libraries (.dll, .ocx), system drivers (.sys, .drv) and many other types of files. The PE format supports storing the data required to load and start an operating system process – including references to dynamic link libraries, tables for importing and exporting application programming interface (API) functions, resource management data and thread-local storage (TLS) information. According to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification, the PE format is also the accepted standard for executables in EFI environments. On Windows NT systems, it currently supports a range of instruction sets, including IA-32, x86-64 (AMD64/Intel 64), IA-64, ARM and ARM64. Before the advent of Windows 2000, Windows NT (and by extension the PE format) also supported MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC architectures. Moreover, thanks to its use in Windows CE, PE has maintained compatibility with several MIPS, ARM (including Thumb), and SuperH variants. Functionally, the PE format is similar to other platform-specific executable formats, such as the ELF format used in Linux and most Unix-like systems, and the Mach-O format found in macOS and iOS.