Re: NS83820 2.6.0-test5 driver seems unstable on IA64

Grant Grundler
2003-09-23T18:51:06Z

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 02:29:25PM -0400, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:
...
> (yet another hardware issue pushed off on software for no significant gain).

Even x86 pays at least a one cycle penalty for every misaligned access.
In general, open source code has no excuse for using misaligned fields.
It's (mostly) avoidable. TCP/IP headers are the historical exception.

One could make the same arguement that a modern NIC should not require
16 byte alignment for DMA. It's a tradeoff one way or the other.
Just a matter of perspective.

grant