Apple has an architectural license. I would expect that allows them to add instructions (assuming modern ARM still has the concept of instruction set extensions)

Google didn’t answer that for me, but I found out that there now is a ”cp15 sctlr[1] (alignment bit)”. http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.... says this about it:

”3.5.1. Alignment faults

If alignment fault checking is enabled (the A bit in CP15 c1 is set), the MMU generates an alignment fault on any data word access if the address is not word-aligned, or on any halfword access if the address is not halfword-aligned, irrespective of whether the MMU is enabled or not. An alignment fault is not generated on any instruction fetch or any byte access.”