> isn't this is the wrong answer to the question? The question
> was NOT why one would want to use unaligned access, despite
> strict alignment is faster. The question was: Why strict alignment
> is a performance penalty?

Actually, the question was "why is STRICT_ALIGNMENT a performance
penalty", and the answer is: because it doesn't make the compiler lay
data out differently, it just affects how it accesses it in certain
cases.

-- Dan