If you are reading this because of a data abort: the following MIGHT
  be relevant to your abort, if it was caused by an alignment violation.
  In order to determine this, use the PC from the abort dump along with
  an objdump -s -S of the u-boot ELF binary to locate the function where
  the abort happened; then compare this function with the examples below.
  If they match, then you've been hit with a compiler generated unaligned
  access, and you should rewrite your code or add -mno-unaligned-access
  to the command line of the offending file.
  
  Note that the PC shown in the abort message is relocated. In order to
  be able to match it to an address in the ELF binary dump, you will need
  to know the relocation offset. If your target defines CONFIG_CMD_BDI
  and if you can get to the prompt and enter commands before the abort
  happens, then command "bdinfo" will give you the offset. Otherwise you
  will need to try a build with DEBUG set, which will display the offset,
  or use a debugger and set a breakpoint at relocate_code() to see the
  offset (passed as an argument).
  
  *
  
  Since U-Boot runs on a variety of hardware, some only able to perform
  unaligned accesses with a strong penalty, some unable to perform them
  at all, the policy regarding unaligned accesses is to not perform any,
  unless absolutely necessary because of hardware or standards.
  
  Also, on hardware which permits it, the core is configured to throw
  data abort exceptions on unaligned accesses in order to catch these
  unallowed accesses as early as possible.
  
  Until version 4.7, the gcc default for performing unaligned accesses
  (-mno-unaligned-access) is to emulate unaligned accesses using aligned
  loads and stores plus shifts and masks. Emulated unaligned accesses
  will not be caught by hardware. These accesses may be costly and may
  be actually unnecessary. In order to catch these accesses and remove
  or optimize them, option -munaligned-access is explicitly set for all
  versions of gcc which support it.
  
  From gcc 4.7 onward starting at armv7 architectures, the default for
  performing unaligned accesses is to use unaligned native loads and
  stores (-munaligned-access), because the cost of unaligned accesses
  has dropped on armv7 and beyond. This should not affect U-Boot's
  policy of controlling unaligned accesses, however the compiler may
  generate uncontrolled unaligned accesses on its own in at least one
  known case: when declaring a local initialized char array, e.g.
  
  function foo()
  {
  	char buffer[] = "initial value";
  /* or */
  	char buffer[] = { 'i', 'n', 'i', 't', 0 };
  	...
  }
  
  Under -munaligned-accesses with optimizations on, this declaration
  causes the compiler to generate native loads from the literal string
  and native stores to the buffer, and the literal string alignment
  cannot be controlled. If it is misaligned, then the core will throw
  a data abort exception.
  
  Quite probably the same might happen for 16-bit array initializations
  where the constant is aligned on a boundary which is a multiple of 2
  but not of 4:
  
  function foo()
  {
  	u16 buffer[] = { 1, 2, 3 };
  	...
  }
  
  The long term solution to this issue is to add an option to gcc to
  allow controlling the general alignment of data, including constant
  initialization values.
  
  However this will only apply to the version of gcc which will have such
  an option. For other versions, there are four workarounds:
  
  a) Enforce as a rule that array initializations as described above
     are forbidden. This is generally not acceptable as they are valid,
     and usual, C constructs. The only case where they could be rejected
     is when they actually equate to a const char* declaration, i.e. the
     array is initialized and never modified in the function's scope.
  
  b) Drop the requirement on unaligned accesses at least for ARMv7,
     i.e. do not throw a data abort exception upon unaligned accesses.
     But that will allow adding badly aligned code to U-Boot, only for
     it to fail when re-used with a stricter target, possibly once the
     bad code is already in mainline.
  
  c) Relax the -munaligned-access rule globally. This will prevent native
     unaligned accesses of course, but that will also hide any bug caused
     by a bad unaligned access, making it much harder to diagnose it. It
     is actually what already happens when building ARM targets with a
     pre-4.7 gcc, and it may actually already hide some bugs yet unseen
     until the target gets compiled with -munaligned-access.
  
  d) Relax the -munaligned-access rule only for for files susceptible to
     the local initialized array issue and for armv7 architectures and
     beyond. This minimizes the quantity of code which can hide unwanted
     misaligned accesses.
  
  The option retained is d).
  
  Considering that actual occurrences of the issue are rare (as of this
  writing, 5 files out of 7840 in U-Boot, or .3%, contain an initialized
  local char array which cannot actually be replaced with a const char*),
  contributors should not be required to systematically try and detect
  the issue in their patches.
  
  Detecting files susceptible to the issue can be automated through a
  filter installed as a hook in .git which recognizes local char array
  initializations. Automation should err on the false positive side, for
  instance flagging non-local arrays as if they were local if they cannot
  be told apart.
  
  In any case, detection shall not prevent committing the patch, but
  shall pre-populate the commit message with a note to the effect that
  this patch contains an initialized local char or 16-bit array and thus
  should be protected from the gcc 4.7 issue.
  
  Upon a positive detection, either $(PLATFORM_NO_UNALIGNED) should be
  added to CFLAGS for the affected file(s), or if the array is a pseudo
  const char*, it should be replaced by an actual one.