Re: [RFC] Documentation about unaligned memory access

Robert Hancock
2007-11-23T01:25:27Z

Daniel Drake wrote:
> Being spoilt by the luxuries of i386/x86_64 I've never really had a good
> grasp on unaligned memory access problems on other architectures and decided
> it was time to figure it out. As a result I've written this documentation
> which I plan to submit for inclusion as
> Documentation/unaligned_memory_access.txt
>
> Before I do so, any comments on the following?

...

> You may be wondering why you have never seen these problems on your own
> architecture. Some architectures (such as i386 and x86_64) do not have this
> limitation, but nevertheless it is important for you to write portable code
> that works everywhere.

Also, x86 doesn't prohibit unaligned accesses, but I believe they have a
significant performance cost and are best avoided where possible.

--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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