"H.J. Lu" <hjl.to...@gmail.com> writes: >> There are many ways to align data without exposing it in the >> ABI--e.g., the alignment of a global array is not part of the ABI, in >> that nothing breaks if the alignment is increased. Also, there are >> many programs which simply don't care about an external ABI. >> > > You can just use a value like __attribute ((aligned (8))) > or some value suitable for the variable type. It is > as good as any value we can use with > __attribute__ ((aligned(max))) today since whatever > we choose now may not be appropriate later.
I feel like a broken record here, but if I want maximal performance for copying data in and out of a buffer, then I want it maximally aligned for the processor. If I am writing portable code, then I don't know what that maximal alignment is. Ian
