pw_alignment

This module defines an interface for ensuring natural alignment of objects.

Avoiding Atomic Libcalls

The main motivation is to provide a portable way for preventing the compiler from emitting libcalls to builtin atomics functions and instead use native atomic instructions. This is especially useful for any pigweed user that uses std::atomic.

Take for example std::atomic<std::optional<bool>>. Accessing the underlying object would normally involve a call to a builtin __atomic_* function provided by a builtins library. However, if the compiler can determine that the size of the object is the same as its alignment, then it can replace a libcall to __atomic_* with native instructions.

There can be certain situations where a compiler might not be able to assert this. Depending on the implementation of std::optional<bool>, this object could have a size of 2 bytes but an alignment of 1 byte which wouldn’t satisfy the constraint.

Basic usage

pw_alignment provides a wrapper class pw::NaturallyAligned for enforcing natural alignment without any changes to how the object is used. Since this is commonly used with atomics, an aditional class pw::AlignedAtomic is provided for simplifying things.

// Passing a `std::optional<bool>` to `__atomic_exchange` might not replace the call
// with native instructions if the compiler cannot determine all instances of this object
// will happen to be aligned.
std::atomic<std::optional<bool>> maybe_nat_aligned_obj;

// `pw::NaturallyAligned<...>` forces the object to be aligned to its size, so passing
// it to `__atomic_exchange` will result in a replacement with native instructions.
std::atomic<pw::NaturallyAligned<std::optional<bool>>> nat_aligned_obj;

// Shorter spelling for the same as above.
std::AlignedAtomic<std::optional<bool>> also_nat_aligned_obj;