> That article is from 1996. About that time 16bit machines were state of > the art. Nowadays, we work on 32bit systems. Along with doubling the > bits, the alignment of variables in memory changed too. From 4Byte to > 8... > > At least that's what I'd think it is... Correct me if I'm wrong. > (last messed with c/asm a year ago :-) ) > If i recall correctly, the purpose of 4-byte allignment is to extend the range for some of the intel addressing modes. The end result at the how-bits-fit-in-the-instruction level was that the last two bits could be implicit in these addresses, which expanded the range by a factor of 4. This aspect of the instruction format has not been changed in their 32 bit architectures, therefore i see no reason why they would have moved to 8-byte allignment. Then again, my computer architecture class could have had totally wrong specs for the pentiums, anything is possible.
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