https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88345
--- Comment #11 from Mark Rutland <mark at kernel dot org> --- Further, at `-O1` and above GCC seems to silently drop the alignment of any implementation of abort(), apparently implicitly marking it as cold. I assume that may be true for other special functions. For example: [mark@lakrids:/mnt/data/tests/gcc-alignment]% cat abort.c void abort(void) { __builtin_trap(); } [mark@lakrids:/mnt/data/tests/gcc-alignment]% usekorg 12.1.0 aarch64-linux-gcc -falign-functions=16 -c abort.c -O2 [mark@lakrids:/mnt/data/tests/gcc-alignment]% usekorg 12.1.0 aarch64-linux-objdump -d abort.o abort.o: file format elf64-littleaarch64 Disassembly of section .text.unlikely: 0000000000000000 <abort>: 0: d4207d00 brk #0x3e8 [mark@lakrids:/mnt/data/tests/gcc-alignment]% usekorg 12.1.0 aarch64-linux-objdump -h abort.o abort.o: file format elf64-littleaarch64 Sections: Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn 0 .text 00000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000040 2**0 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE 1 .data 00000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000040 2**0 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA 2 .bss 00000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000040 2**0 ALLOC 3 .text.unlikely 00000004 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000040 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE 4 .comment 00000013 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000044 2**0 CONTENTS, READONLY 5 .note.GNU-stack 00000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000057 2**0 CONTENTS, READONLY 6 .eh_frame 00000028 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000058 2**3 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, READONLY, DATA