A pair of cross-platform C functions to allocate and free aligned memory
void * aligned_malloc(size_t size, size_t alignment);
void aligned_free(void * pointer);
Use the two functions in place of malloc and free when you need aligned memory.
Mac OS X and Linux are supported by calling posix_memalign, Windows by calling _aligned_malloc (_aligned_malloc_dbg while compiling with _DEBUG). Outside of those platforms, determined with the __APPLE__, __linux__, and _WIN32 macro definitions respectively, the function will use a custom implementation. This custom implementation uses malloc under the hood, but returns a pointer to an aligned memory address within a larger memory block. It stores the pointer returned by malloc in the extra space before the aligned memory for aligned_free to access later. This is necessary to ensure the memory can be freed correctly.