Andi Kleen wrote:

Jeff Kirsher [off-list ref] writes:


Sorry for the late comment.

quoted

 
+#ifdef CONFIG_MCORE2
+/*
+ * We handle most unaligned accesses in hardware.  On the other hand
+ * unaligned DMA can be quite expensive on some Nehalem processors.
+ *
+ * Based on this we disable the IP header alignment in network drivers.
+ */
+#define NET_IP_ALIGN	0
+#endif
 #endif /* _ASM_X86_SYSTEM_H */

The ifdef should be imho dropped and the option be made unconditional
for all x86. I am not aware of any x86 core where unalignment is really
slow. This would increase the chance of it actually working on many
configurations which do not necessarily optimize for Core2.

-Andi

Seems to make sense to me.  I will see about generating a patch that 
drops the check for CONFIG_MCORE2.

Thanks,

Alex