[gritzko]

That better be marked "historical". At least, Lemire says:

On recent Intel and 64-bit ARM processors, data alignment does not make processing a lot faster. It is a micro-optimization. Data alignment for speed is a myth. // https://lemire.me/blog/2012/05/31/data-alignment-for-speed-m...

(while in the olden days, a program may crash on unaligned access, esp on RISC)

[eru]

Don't mix up what processors do with what the C standard allows you to get away with.

[flohofwoe]

...and don't mix up the C standard with what actually existing compilers allow you to get away with ;) In the end the standard is merely a set of guidelines. What matters is how compiler toolchains behave in the real word, and breaking code which does unaligned memory accesses by 'UB exploitation' would be quite insane.

[eru]

Sanity ain't a hard requirement for C compilers.