Aligned and unaligned memory accesses?

Question

What is the difference between aligned and unaligned memory access?

I work on an TMS320C64x DSP, and I want to use the intrinsic functions (C functions for assembly

Answer 1

_mem2 is more general. It'll work if ptr is aligned or not. _amem2 is more strict: it requires that ptr be aligned (though is presumably slightly more efficient). So use _mem2 unless you can guarantee that ptr is always aligned.