[Ffmpeg-devel] [PATCH]: Too much alignment assumed by H264 decoder

[Martin Boehme]

Mike Melanson wrote:
> David S. Miller wrote:
>> I did the fix, some folks just don't like it.  To be honest, I don't
>> think it decreases performance all as much as is being implied.
>>
>> The fact is that the object is 4-byte, not 8-byte aligned, on 32-bit
>> platforms.  So you can't legally do 8-byte memory accesses to them
>> in such cases.
>>
>> With the way the code is now, it crashes on 32-bit platforms other
>> than x86 and x86_64 (which do not trap on unaligned memory accesses).
>> And because the x86 and x86_64 don't trap, but instead just eat a
>> couple extra cycles to perform the unaligned memory accesses, this
>> makes me believe that the "performance penalty" of my patch is
>> possibly a myth not fact.
> 
>     Do you have any numbers to back this up? Per my understanding, 
> unaligned accessed for MMX instructions is possible but slightly slower. 
> IIRC, unaligned access on SSE2 instructions is not possible.

It is possible, but you have to use the MOVDQU (move double quad 
unaligned) instruction instead of MOVDQA (...aligned).

Martin

-- 
Martin B?hme
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