"Unaligned access" on Alpha

[Kelledin <kelledin+DAXP@skarpsey.dyndns.org>]

Lately I've been looking closely at the compile logs on my EV56 
box, and I've noticed a particular gcc warning occurring 
frequently:

    cast increases required alignment of target type.

This worries me almost as much as casts between integers and 
pointers of different size, but...even with all the warnings, I 
don't get too many crashes.  Still, I'm compelled to wonder 
about the effect of unaligned accesses, i.e. how severe is an 
unaligned access in user-space?  How about in kernel-space?  How 
does the system handle them?

I have a pretty clear idea what it would take to fix that warning 
condition, but it occurs so frequently that I'm not sure it 
would be worth the time. :/

-- 
Kelledin
"If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does 
it still cost four figures to fix?"