Portability and BS

[Henry Spencer]

> This alignment issue is not so simple.  In the IBM 360 family, the 360
> machines required "ints" to be aligned mod 4; the 370 and
> later processors did not... the 68020 again relaxes the alignment
> restrictions.

Remember, too, that both the 370 and the 68020 impose serious performance
penalties on unaligned accesses.  Most any unaligned-operand machine will
end up doing so, unless it only has an 8-bit memory bus.  Alignment is
*always* a good idea.
-- 
"For perfect safety... sit on a fence|  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
and watch the birds." --Wilbur Wright| {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry