Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 01:29:11 +0000
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Daniel Drake <dsd@gentoo.org>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, davem@davemloft.net, kune@deine-taler.de,
       johannes@sipsolutions.net
Subject: Re: [RFC] Documentation about unaligned memory access
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> Most architectures are unable to perform unaligned memory accesses. Any
> unaligned access causes a processor exception.

Not all. Some simply produce the wrong answer - thats oh so much more
exciting.

> 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.

Its usually faster if you don't misalign on x86 as well.

Alan
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