Patent ID: 8688947

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: an alignment module, the alignment module implemented in a hardware that is external to a processor, and the alignment module configured to: identify requested data that is not aligned on a natural alignment boundary of memory; load at least two sets of neighboring data into stream registers such that each of the at least two sets of neighboring data includes at least a portion of the requested data; determine which one of the at least two sets of neighboring data in the stream registers contain a most significant bit of the requested data and which one other of the at least two sets of neighboring data contain a least significant bit of the requested data; swap an order of the at least two sets of neighboring data in the stream registers to place the at least two sets of neighboring data in a significance order for extraction; extract the requested data from the at least two sets of neighboring data based on which one of the at least two sets of neighboring data contain the most significant bit of the requested data and which one other of the at least two sets of neighboring data contain the least significant bit of the requested data; and output the extracted data to the processor.