'align' instruction on MIPS
Solution 1
You usually align data to get better performance. For most processors, memory access has some penalty when not accessing specific byte boundaries. For other assemblers, there often is some kind of pseudo-op .align
for this. Most compilers also align their data structures (though you can disable it for debug purposes).
Also See this Wikipedia entry.
Note that non-emulated MIPS systems might even crash if you try to access unaligned memory cells (see here and here).
Solution 2
Is there an equivalent instruccion in other assemblers?
MASM has an Align directive: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dwa9fwef(VS.80).aspx
Comments
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Eliseo Ocampos almost 2 years
What exactly does this instruction do? I know that it tries to align data with a multiple of a specific number but why would you need to do this? Is there an equivalent instruction in other assemblers?
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Eliseo Ocampos almost 15 yearsThanks for the additional clarifications in external links!
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Vikram Dattu about 7 yearsHow about storing double float on stack? It needs 8 byte alignment right?
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Tom about 7 yearsYes, doubles align to 64 bits