5.7.7.8 Align-loops Option

The -falign-loops=n option aligns loops to the next power-of-two greater than n, skipping up to n bytes. For instance, -falign-loops=32 aligns loops to the next 32-byte boundary; -falign-loops=24 aligns loops to the next 32-byte boundary but only if this can be done by skipping no more than 23 bytes.

The -fno-align-loops form of this option is equivalent to -falign-loops=1 and implies that functions are not aligned. The -falign-loops form of this option (with no argument) also performs no alignment.

The hope is that the loop is executed many times, which makes up for any execution of the dummy operations.