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+# Proposal: Make 64-bit fields be 64-bit aligned on 32-bit systems, add //go:packed, //go:align directives
+
+Author(s): Dan Scales (with input from many others)
+
+Last updated: 2020-06-08
+
+Initial proposal and discussion at:  https://github.com/golang/go/issues/36606
+
+## Abstract
+
+We propose to change the default layout of structs on 32-bit systems such that
+64-bit fields will be 8-byte (64-bit) aligned. The layout of structs on 64-bit systems
+will not change. For compatibility reasons (and finer control of struct layout),
+we also propose the addition of a `//go:packed` directive that applies to struct
+types. When the `//go:packed` directive is specified immediately before a struct
+type, then that struct will have a fully-packed layout, where fields are placed
+in order with no padding between them and hence no alignment based on types. The
+developer must explicitly add padding to enforce any desired alignment.  We also
+propose the addition of a `//go:align` directive that applies to all types.  It
+sets the required alignment in bytes for the associated type.  This directive
+will be useful in general, but specifically can be used to set the required
+alignment for packed structs.
+
+
+## Background
+
+
+Currently, each Go type has a required alignment in bytes.
+This alignment is used for setting the alignment for any
+variable of the associated type (whether global variable, local variable,
+argument, return value, or heap allocation) or a field of the associated type in
+a struct. The actual alignments are implementation-dependent.  In gc, the alignment
+can be 1, 2, 4, or 8 bytes.  The alignment determination is fairly straightforward,
+and mostly encapsulated in the functions `gc.dowidth()` and `gc.widstruct()` in
+`cmd/compile/internal/gc/align.go`.  gccgo and GoLLVM have slightly different alignments
+for some types.  This proposal is focused on the alignments used in gc.
+
+The alignment rules differ slightly between 64-bit and 32-bit systems. Of
+course, certain types (such as pointers and integers) have different sizes
+and hence different alignments. The main other difference is the treatment of
+64-bit basic types such as `int64`, `uint64`, and `float64`. On 64-bit systems, the
+alignment of 64-bit basic types is 8 bytes (64 bits), while on 32-bit systems,
+the alignment of these types is 4 bytes (32 bits). This means that fields in a
+struct on a 32-bit system that have a 64-bit basic type may be aligned only to 4
+bytes, rather than to 8 bytes.
+
+There are a few more alignment rules for global variables and heap-allocated
+locations. Any heap-allocated type that is 8 bytes or more is always aligned on
+an 8-byte boundary, even on 32-bit systems (see `runtime.mallocgc`).
+Any global variable which is a
+64-bit base type or is a struct also always is aligned on 8 bytes (even on
+32-bit systems). Hence, the above alignment difference for 64-bit base types
+between 64-bit and 32-bit systems really only occurs for fields in a struct and
+for stack variables (including arguments and return values).
+
+The main goal of this change is to avoid the bugs that frequently happen on
+32-bit systems, where a developer wants to be able to do 64-bit operations (such
+as an atomic operation) on a 64-bit field, but gets an alignment error because
+the field is not 8-byte aligned. With the current struct layout rules (based on
+the current type alignment rules), a developer must often add explicit padding
+in order to make sure that such a 64-bit field is on a 8-byte boundary. As shown
+by repeated mentions in issue [#599](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/599)
+(18 in 2019 alone), developers still often run into this problem. They may only
+run into it late in the development cycle as they are testing on 32-bit
+architectures, or when they execute an uncommon code path that requires the
+alignment.
+
+As an example, the struct for ticks in `runtime/runtime.go` is declared as
+
+```go
+var ticks struct {
+	lock mutex
+	pad  uint32 // ensure 8-byte alignment of val on 386
+	val  uint64
+}
+```
+
+so that the `val` field is properly aligned on 32-bit architectures.
+
+Note that there can also be alignment issues with stack variables which have
+64-bit base types, but it seems less likely that a program would be using a local
+variable for 64-bit operations such as atomic operations.
+
+There are related reasons why a developer might want to explicitly control the
+alignment of a specific type (possibly to an alignment even great than 8 bytes),
+as detailed in issue [#19057](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/19057). As
+mentioned in that issue, "on x86 there are vector instructions that require
+alignment to 16 bytes, and there are even some instructions (e.g., vmovaps with
+VEC.256), that require 32 byte alignment." It is also possible that a developer
+might want to force alignment of a type to be on a cache line boundary, to
+improve locality and avoid false sharing (e.g. see `cpu.CacheLinePad` in the
+`runtime` package sources). Cache line sizes typically range from
+32 to 128 bytes.
+
+
+## Proposal
+
+This proposal consists of a proposed change to the default alignment rules on 32-bit systems,
+a new `//go:packed` directive, and a new `//go:align` directive.  We describe each in a
+separate sub-section.
+
+### Alignment changes
+
+The main part of our proposal is the following:
+
+ * We change the default alignment of 64-bit fields in structs on 32-bit systems
+   from 4 bytes to 8 bytes
+ * We do not change the alignment of 64-bit base types otherwise (i.e. for stack
+   variables, global variables, or heap allocations)
+
+Since the alignment of a struct is based on the maximum alignment of any field
+in the struct, this change will also change the overall alignment of certain
+structs on 32-bit systems from 4 to 8 bytes.
+
+It is important that we do not change the alignment of stack variables
+(particular arguments and return values), since changing their alignment would
+directly change the Go calling ABI.  (As we’ll note below, we are still
+changing the ABI in a minor way, since we are changing the layout and possibly
+the size of some structs that could be passed as arguments and return values.)
+
+As mentioned above, 64-bit basic types are already aligned to 8 bytes
+(based on other rules) for global variables or heap allocations.  Therefore, we
+do not usually run into alignment problems for 64-bit basic types on 32-bit
+systems when they are simple global variables or heap allocations.
+
+One way to think about this change is that each type has two alignment
+properties, analogous to the `Type.FieldAlign()` and `Type.Align()`
+methods in the `reflect` package. The first property specifies
+the alignment when that type
+occurs as a field in a struct. The second property specifies the
+alignment when that type is used in any other situation, including stack
+variables, global variables, and heap allocations. For almost all types, the
+field alignment and the "other" alignment of each type will be equal to each
+other and the same as it is today. However, in this proposal, 64-bit basic types
+(`int64`, `uint64`, and `float64`) on 32-bit system will have a field alignment of 8
+bytes, but keep an "other" alignment of 4 bytes.  As we mentioned, structs that
+contain 64-bit basic types on 32-bit systems may have 8-byte alignment now where
+previously they had 4-byte alignment; however, both their field alignment and
+their "other" alignment would have this new value.
+
+### Addition of a `//go:packed` directive
+
+We make the above proposed change in order to reduce the kind of bugs detailed in issue
+[#599](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/599). However, we need to maintain
+explicit compatibility for struct layout in some important situations.
+Therefore, we also propose the following:
+
+ * We add a new Go directive `//go:packed` which applies to the immediately
+   following struct type. That struct type will have a fully-packed layout,
+   where fields are placed in order with no padding between them and hence no
+   alignment based on types.
+
+The `//go:packed` property will become part of the following struct type
+that it applies to.  In particular, we will not allow assignment/conversion from
+a struct type to the equivalent packed struct type, and vice versa.
+
+The `//go:packed` property only applies to the struct type being defined.  It does
+not apply to any struct type that is embedded in the type being defined.  Any
+embedded struct type must similarly be defined with the `//go:packed` property if
+it is to be packed either on its own or inside another struct definition.
+`//go:packed` will be ignored if it appears anywhere
+else besides immediately preceding a struct type definition.
+
+The idea with the `//go:packed` directive is to give the developer complete
+control over the layout of a struct.  In particular, the developer (or a
+code-generating program) can add padding so that the fields of a packed struct are laid
+out in exactly the same way as they were in Go 1.15 (i.e. without the above
+proposed alignment change).  Matching the exact layout as in Go 1.15 is needed
+in some specific situations:
+
+1.  Matching the layout of some Syscall structs, such as `Stat_t` and `Flock_t` on linux/386.
+    On 32-bit systems, these two structs actually have 64-bit fields that are
+    not aligned on 8-byte boundaries.  Since these structs are the exact
+    struct used to interface with Linux syscalls, they must have exactly the
+    specified layout.  With this proposal, any structs passed to syscall.Syscall
+    should be laid out exactly using `//go:packed`.
+
+2.  Some cgo structs (which are used to match declared C structs) may also
+    have 64-bit fields that are not aligned on 8-byte boundaries.  So, with this
+    proposal, cgo should use `//go:packed` for generated Go structs that must
+    exactly match the layout of C structs.  In fact, there are currently C
+    structs that cannot be matched exactly by Go structs, because of the current
+    (Go 1.15) alignment rules.  With the use of `//go:packed`, cgo will now be able
+    to match exactly the layout of any C struct (unless the struct uses bitfields).
+
+Note that there is possibly assembly language code in some Go programs or
+libraries that directly accesses the fields of a struct using hard-wired
+offsets, rather than offsets obtained from a `go_asm.h` file. If that struct has
+64-bit fields, then the offsets of those fields may change on 32-bit systems
+with this proposal. In that case, then the assembly code may break. In that
+case, we strongly recommend rewriting the assembly language code to use offsets
+from `go_asm.h` (or using values obtained from from Go code via
+`unsafe.Offsetof`). We would not recommend forcing the layout of the struct to
+remain the same by using `//go:packed` and appropriate padding.
+
+### Addition of a `//go:align` directive
+
+One issue with the `//go:packed` idea is determining the overall alignment of
+a packed struct.  Currently, the overall alignment of a struct is computed as
+the maximum alignment of any of its fields.  In the case of `//go:packed`, the
+alignment of each field is essentially 1.  Therefore, conceptually, the overall
+alignment of a packed struct is 1.  We could therefore consider that we need to
+explicitly specify the alignment of a packed struct.
+
+As we mentioned above, there are other reasons why developers would like to
+specify an explicit alignment for a Go type.  For both of these reasons, we
+therefore propose a method to specify the alignment of a Go type:
+
+ * We add a new Go directive `//go:align` N, which applies to the immediately
+   following type, where N can be any positive power of 2. The following
+   type will have the specified required alignment, or the natural alignment
+   of the type, whichever is larger.  It will be a compile-time
+   error if N is missing or is not a positive power of 2.  `//go:packed` and `//go:align`
+   can appear in either order if they are both specified preceding a struct type.
+
+In order to work well with memory allocators, etc., we only allow alignments
+that are powers of 2.  There will probably have to be some practical upper limit on
+the possible value of N.  Even for the purposes of aligning to cache lines, we would
+likely only need alignment up to 128 bytes.
+
+One issue with allowing otherwise identical types to have different alignments
+is the question of when pointers to these types can be converted.  Consider the
+following example:
+
+```go
+
+type A struct {
+  x, y, z, w int32
+}
+
+type B struct {
+  x, y, z, w int32
+}
+
+//go:align 8
+type C struct {
+  x, y, z, w int32
+}
+
+a := &A{}
+b := (*B)(a)     // conversion 1
+c := (*C)(a)    // conversion 2
+```
+
+As in current Go, conversion 1 should certainly be allowed.  However, it is not
+clear that conversion 2 should be allowed, since object `a` may not be
+aligned to 8 bytes, so it may not satisfy the alignment property of `C` if `a`
+is assigned to `c`.  Although this issue of convertability applies only to pointers of aligned
+structs, it seems simplest and most consistent to include alignment as part of the base
+type that it applies to.  We would therefore disallow converting from `A` to `C` and vice versa.
+We propose the following:
+
+ * An alignment directive becomes part of the type that it applies to, and makes that type
+   distinct from an otherwise identical type with a different (or no) alignment.
+
+With this proposal, types `(*C)` and `(*A)` are not convertible, despite pointing to
+structs that look identical, because the alignment of the structs to which they
+point are different.  Therefore, conversion 2 would cause a compile-time error.  Similarly,
+conversion between `A` and `C` would be disallowed.
+
+### Vet and compiler checks
+
+Finally, we would like to help ensure that `//go:packed` is used in
+cases where struct layout must maintain strict compatibility with Go 1.15. As
+mentioned above, the important cases where compatibility must be maintained are structs
+passed to syscalls and structs used with
+Cgo.  Therefore, we propose the addition of the following vet check:
+
+ * New 'go vet' pass that requires the usage of `//go:packed` on a struct if a
+   pointer to that struct type is passed to syscall.Syscall (or its variants) or to cgo.
+
+The syscall check should cover most of the supported OSes (including Windows and
+Windows DLLs), but we may have to extend the vet check if there are other ways
+to call native OS functions. For example, in Windows, we may also want to cover
+the `(*LazyProc).Call` API for calling DLL functions.
+
+We could similarly have an error if a pointer to a non-packed struct type is
+passed to an assembly language function, though that warning might have a lot of
+false positives. Possibly we would limit warnings to such assembly language
+functions that clearly do not make use of `go_asm.h` definitions.
+
+We intend that `//go:packed` should only be used in limited situations, such as
+controlling exact layout of structs used in syscalls or in cgo.  It is possible
+to cause bugs or performance problems if it is not used correctly.  In
+particular, there could be problems with garbage collection if fields containing
+pointers are not aligned to the standard pointer alignment.  Therefore,
+we propose the following compiler and vet checks:
+
+ * The compiler will give a compile-time error if the fields of a packed struct are aligned
+   incorrectly for garbage collection or hardware-specific needs.  In particular, it will be
+   an error if a pointer field is not aligned to a 4-byte boundary.  It may also be an error,
+   depending on the hardware, if 16-bit fields are not aligned to 2-byte boundaries or
+   32-bit fields are not aligned to 4-byte boundaries.
+
+Some processors can successfully load 32-bit quantities that are not aligned to
+4 bytes, but the unaligned load is much slower than an aligned load.  So, the idea
+of compiler check for the alignment of 16-bit and 32-bit quantities is to protect
+against this case where certain loads are "silently" much slower because they
+are accessing unaligned fields.
+
+
+## Alternate proposals
+
+The above proposal contains a coherent set of proposed changes that address the
+main issue [#599](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/599), 
+while also including some functionality (packed structs, aligned
+types) that are useful for other purposes as well.
+
+However, there are a number of alternatives, both to the set of features in the
+proposal, and also in the details of individual items in the proposal.
+
+The above proposal has quite a number of
+individual items, each of which adds complexity and may have unforeseen issues.
+One alternative is to reduce the scope of the proposal, by removing
+`//go:align`. With this alternative, we would propose a separate rule for the
+alignment of a packed struct. Instead of having a default alignment of 1, a
+packed struct would have as its alignment the max alignment of all the types
+that make up its individual fields. That is, a packed struct would automatically
+have the same overall alignment as the equivalent unpacked struct.  With this
+definition, we don't need to include `//go:align` in this proposal.
+
+Another alternative (which actually increases the scope of the proposal) would
+be to allow `//go:align` to apply not just to type declarations, but also to
+field declarations within a packed struct.  This would allow explicit alignment of
+fields within a packed struct, which would make it easier for developers to get field
+alignment correct without using padding.  However, we probably do not want to
+encourage broad use of `//go:align`, and this ability of `//go:align` to set the
+alignment of fields might become greatly overused.
+
+## Alternate syntax
+
+There is also an alternative design that has the same set of features, but expresses the
+alignment of types differently.  Instead of using `//go:align`, this alternative
+follows the proposal in issue [#19057](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/19057) and
+expresses alignment via new runtime types
+included in structs.  In this proposal, there are runtime types
+`runtime.Aligned8`, `runtime.Aligned16`, etc.  If, for example, a field with
+type `runtime.Aligned16` is included in a struct type definition, then that
+struct type will have an alignment of 16 bytes, as in:
+
+```go
+type vector struct {
+    _ runtime.Aligned16
+    vals [16]byte
+}
+```
+
+It is possible that using `runtime.AlignedN` could directly apply to the following field in
+the struct as well.  Hence, `runtime.AlignedN` could appear multiple times in a struct in order
+to set the alignment of various fields, as well as affecting the overall alignment of the struct.
+
+Similarly, the packed attribute of a struct is expressed by including a field with type
+`runtime.Packed`.  These fields are zero-length and can either have a name or not.  If they
+have a name, it is possible to take a pointer to them.  It would be an error to use these types
+in any situation other than as a type for a field in a struct.
+
+There are a number of positives and negatives to this proposal, as compared to the use
+of `//go:packed` and `//go:aligned`, as listed below.
+
+Advantages of special field types / disadvantages of directives:
+1. Most importantly, using `runtime.AlignedN` and `runtime.Packed` types in a struct makes it
+   obvious that these constructs affect the type of the containing struct.  The inclusion of these
+   extra fields means that Go  doesn't require any special added constraints for type
+   equivalence, assignability, or convertibility.  The use of directives `//go:packed` and
+   `//go:aligned` don’t make it as obvious that they actually change the following type.  This
+   may cause more changes in other Go tools, since they must be changed to notice these
+   directives and realize their effect on the following type.  There is no current `//go:` directive
+   that affects the following type.  (`//go:notinheap` relates to the following type, but does not
+   change the declared type, and is only available in the runtime package.)
+2. `runtime.AlignedN` could just be a zero-width type with alignment N that also affects the
+   alignment of the following field.  This is easy to describe and understand, and provides a
+   natural way to control both field and struct alignment.  [`runtime.AlignedN` may or may not 
+   disable field re-ordering -- to be determined.]
+3. If `runtime.AlignedN` applies to the following field, users can easily control padding and
+   alignment within a struct. This is particularly useful in conjunction with `runtime.Packed`, as it
+   provides a mechanism to add back desired field alignment where packing removed it.  It
+   potentially seems much more unusual to have a directive `//go:align` be specified inside a 
+   struct declaration and applying specifically to the next field.
+4. Some folks prefer to not add any more pragma-like `//go:`  comments in the language.
+
+Advantages of directives / disadvantages of special field types:
+1. We have established `//go:` as the prefix for these kinds of build/compiler directives, and it's
+   unfortunate to add a second one in the type system instead.
+2. With `runtime.AlignedN`, a simple non-struct type (such as `[16]byte`) can only be aligned by
+   embedding it in a struct, whereas `//go:align` can apply directly to a non-struct type. It doesn't
+   seem very Go-like to force people to create structs like the 'vector' type when plain types like
+   `[16]byte` will do.
+3. `runtime.Packed` and `runtime.AlignedN` both appear to apply to the following field in the
+   struct.  In the case of runtime.Packed, this doesn’t make any sense -- `runtime.Packed`
+   applies to the whole struct only, not to any particular field.
+4. Adding an alignment/packing field forces the use of key:value literals, which is annoying
+   and non-orthogonal. Directives have no effect on literals, so unkeyed literals would continue
+   to work.
+5. With `runtime.Packed`, there is a hard break at some Go version, where you can't write a
+   single struct that works for both older and newer Go versions. That will necessitate separate
+   files and build tags during any conversion. With the comments you can write one piece of
+   code that has the same meaning to both older and newer versions of Go (because the explicit
+   padding is old-version compatible and the old version ignores the `//go:packed` comment).
+
+
+## Compatibility
+
+We are not changing the alignment of arguments, return variables, or local
+variables. Since we would be changing the default layout of structs, we could
+affect some programs running on 32-bit systems that depend on the layout of
+structs. However, the layout of structs is not explicitly defined in the Go
+language spec, except for the minimum alignment, and we are maintaining the
+previous minimum alignments. So, we don't believe this change breaks the Go 1
+compatibility promise. If assembly code is accessing struct fields, it should be
+using the symbolic constants (giving the offset of each field in a struct) that
+are available in `go_asm.h`. `go_asm.h` is automatically generated and available for
+each package that contains an assembler file, or can be explicitly generated for
+use elsewhere via `go tool compile -asmhdr go_asm.h`.
+
+## Implementation
+
+We have a developed some prototype code that changes the default alignment of
+64-bit fields on 32-bit systems from 4 bytes to 8 bytes. Since it does not
+include an implementation of `//go:packed`, it does not yet try to deal with the
+compatibility issues associated with syscall structs `Stat_t` and `Flock_t` or
+cgo-generated structs in a complete way. The change is
+[CL 210637](https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/210637). Comments on the design
+or implementation are very welcome.
+
+## Open Issues