Re: kernel memory allocations alignment

[Johannes Erdfelt]

On Sun, Feb 04, 2001, Andi Kleen <[e-mail]> wrote:
> "Hen, Shmulik" <[e-mail]> writes:
> 
> > Actually yes. We were warned that on IA64 architecture the system will halt
> > when accessing any type of variable via a pointer if the pointer does not
> > contain an aligned address matching that type. Until now we were using a
> 
> That will need to be fixed with a handler anyways, the network stack requires 
> unaligned accesses. If the IA64 port doesn't handle that it it's buggy and 
> trivially remotely crashable.

That ia64 port now supports unaligned accesses in kernel mode. (via the
latest patch)

It was more a debugging aid in the beginning than inability to do.

> Of course it'll always be much faster to use aligned accesses that do not
> need an exception.

Absolutely.

JE