Unaligned access messages on DECstation
J. Daniel Smith
dsmith at applga.aa.cad.slb.com
Sat Mar 9 02:24:43 AEST 1991
I'm not sure exactly what newsgroup this belongs in, but these two
looked like good candidates.....
While running a program on the DECstation, I get several messages like
Fixed up unaligned data access at xxxxxx
My understanding of this message is that data was not properly aligned
in memory for the requirements of the MIPS processor (e.g. a 8-byte
double was not on a memory address divisible by 8). This causes a
trap to the operating system, Ultrix fixes the access, and execution
continues.
Two questions arise from this:
* is whatever Ultrix does to fix up the unaligned data access
guaranteed to ALWAYS work for ALL situations? If not, under what
conditions will it fail?
* exactly WHAT does Ultrix do to "fix up" the unaligned data access.
I assume that getting this message degrades the performance of the
program, but other than that, are there any other problems?
Thanks for the help,
Dan
--
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J. Daniel Smith Internet: dsmith at applga.aa.cad.slb.com
Schlumberger CAD/CAM BITNET: smithdan at msuegr
Ann Arbor, Michigan Usenet: uunet!sharkey!applga!dsmith
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