Do bytecode commands aligned?

user_14021199 0
Viewed 49

I know that compilers perform data structure alignment and padding according to 4-byte(for 32-bit systems) or 8-byte(64-bit systems) boundaries. But do interpreters align bytecode commands when they generate bytecode? If a command is coded by 1 byte and operands are coded by 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes then it's seems it's not good for a processor to fetch data if bytecode is interpreted in looped switch? What do you think?

P.S I'm not asking about interpreters that perform JIT.

interpreter bytecode memory-alignment
1 Answers

In general, the answer is no, but the JVM does require 32-bit alignment for the data portions of the lookupswitch and tableswitch instructions. Up to 3 bytes of padding (zeros) must be encoded to ensure proper alignment.

user_4585610
Related