> The reality is that the abstract machine modeled by C is a long, long way from what modern CPUs actually do, But some modern CPUs fault on unaligned access o

> The reality is that the abstract machine modeled by C is a long, long way from what modern CPUs actually do, But some modern CPUs fault on unaligned access or make such access slower. (I think Intel is actually sometimes in the latter camp.) I don't get why people label "modern" as a synonym for their pre-existing favorite idea and then demand stuff reflect that "modernity" or else it is totally illegitimate. Seems like some kind of hangup. As some have mentioned in similar discussions, even the x86 machine code does not reflect how the CPU really works, there are things like caching and branch prediction and speculative execution and microcode and ... There is a long list and probably no one person is aware of all the abstractions.