When should I use _aligned_malloc()?

Question

I've been reading the legacy code,which invloves in the customized memory pooling system, then I found that the code uses _aligned_malloc. I wonder what is this function and when do I have to use it.

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Thanks all of you.

I did read MSDN but what I wanted was the answer like "An example of a reason for wanting a certain alignment is to use the data with the SSE instruction set on x86 where the data must be aligned to a multiple 16".

I finally understood what those code means. thanks again.

Answer 1

This function is useful when the alignment of your memory allocation is important to you.

Alignment means that the numerical value of the pointer returned must be evenly divisible by a certain number, ie. ((unsigned int)ptr) % alignment should evaluate to 0.

An example of a reason for wanting a certain alignment is to use the data with the SSE instruction set on x86 where the data must be aligned to a multiple 16.