On Nov 15, 10:00am, Open Carefully -- Contents Under Pressure wrote:
} 
} I didn't think an x86 processor was capable of executing instructions
} based at unaligned addresses, although I'm not sure of what constitutes
} an unaligned address.  I would suspect that x86 stuff is at least word-
} aligned, if not long-aligned.

     A valid x86 instruction ranges in length from one to 15 bytes
(i486, other x86 processors might have slightly different maximums)
and is not aligned.  This does not cause speed problems since
instructions are fetched from the pre-fetch buffer which can be filled
with complete words.  It would be extremely costly in space for a
processor with variable length instructions to require them to be
aligned.  And, most CISC processors have variable length instructions.

}-- End of excerpt from Open Carefully -- Contents Under Pressure