Enabling stack access alignment checking independently of other memory access alignment checking

摘要

A processor has a stack pointer holding the current location of the stack. It also checks whether the stack pointer is aligned correctly for a stack access operation. The check may be enabled and disabled independently of enabling alignment checking for other memory accesses. The check may determine whether the stack pointer is a multiple of an integer power of two. The processor may have a different stack pointer for different exception levels. In this case, the alignment checking may be enabled separately for each stack. The stack access may be read (pop) accesses or write (push) accesses. The stack access alignment checking and the other memory access alignment checking may be enabled and disabled by setting flags in a configuration data store.