I've been reading so much about memory alignment and I didn't get it, I know that's an important method that you have to keep in mind to write efficient code. But I got confused.
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Try wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure_alignment – n. 1.8e9-where's-my-share m. Aug 19 '20 at 08:51
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Basically, CPUs read data from memory a "word" at a time, word being the natural bit-ness of the CPU. If a multi-byte value is not aligned on a word boundary, the CPU has to issue two (or more) reads to get the value, and that is less efficient. Same thing with writing.
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2That's an oversimplification. Some processors require larger data types to be more restrictively aligned than on a word boundary. It's not uncommon for a `double` to be more restrictively aligned than an `int`, where an `int` is regarded as the "word size". – Tom Karzes Aug 19 '20 at 08:45
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@TomKarzes: Yes, it is absolutely an oversimplification. – 500 - Internal Server Error Aug 19 '20 at 08:46