9.6.7.3 Align Built-in Function

The ALIGN(exp) built-in function returns the location counter (.) aligned to the next exp boundary. The argument, exp, must be an expression whose value is a power of two. This is equivalent to

(. + exp - 1) & ~(exp - 1)

ALIGN built-in function doesn’t change the value of the location counter; it just performs arithmetic on it. Here is an example which aligns the output .data section to the next 0x2000 byte boundary after the preceding section and sets a variable within the section to the next 0x8000 boundary after the input sections:

SECTIONS { ...
  .data ALIGN(0x2000): {
   *(.data)
   variable = ALIGN(0x8000);
  }
...
}