

Data alignment: Why is it so important? - yogrish
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-dalign/

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MichaelCrawford
"Writing Cross-Platform Software: Getting Started" is largely about alignment:

[http://www.warplife.com/tips/code/portable/getting-
started/](http://www.warplife.com/tips/code/portable/getting-started/)

For years it was the top hit for "cross-platform software development". After
a while it wasn't anymore. Eventually I looked into why; I found dozens of
articles on the same topic, all with the term "getting started" in their
titles.

Some people would be angry. I was very pleased. I don't really want credit for
my work; what I want is for problems to go away.

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MichaelCrawford
It's not that data really _has_ to be aligned.

It's that computers are easier and cheaper to design and manufacture if they
require data alignment.

Consider that it would be straightforward for today's 64-bit CPUs to permit
64-bit values to have one-byte alignment. There's all kinds of ways to
implement that in hardware and software, but to do so requires extra
circuitry, that would require larger silicon dies, there would be a greater
failure rate at the fab and so on.

