It is true that on at least some platforms an int* that is 4 byte aligned is faster to access than a pointer that is not aligned. I don’t know if there are plat

It is true that on at least some platforms an int* that is 4 byte aligned is faster to access than a pointer that is not aligned. I don’t know if there are platforms where int* is assumed to be 4-byte aligned, or if the C standard allows or disallows that, but it seems plausible that some compiler somewhere defaulted to assuming an int* is aligned. Some compilers might generate 2 load instructions for an unaligned load, which incurs extra latency even if your data is already in the cache line. These days usually you might use some kind of alignment directive to enforce these things, which works on any pointer type, but it does seem possible that the person’s code you reviewed wasn’t incorrect to assume there’s a difference between those pointer types, even if there was a better option.