Cause 1: Structures having Eigen objects as members
If you have code like this,
class Foo
{
//...
//...
};
//...
Foo *foo = new Foo;
then you need to read this separate page: Structures Having Eigen Members.
Note that here, Eigen::Vector2d is only used as an example, more generally the issue arises for all fixed-size vectorizable Eigen types.
Cause 2: STL Containers
If you use STL Containers such as std::vector, std::map, ..., with Eigen objects, or with classes containingEigen objects, like this,
std::vector<:matrix2f> my_vector;
struct my_class { ... Eigen::Matrix2f m; ... };
std::map my_map;
then you need to read this separate page: Using STL Containers with Eigen.
Cause 3: Passing Eigen objects by value
If some function in your code is getting an Eigen object passed by value, like this,
Note that here, Eigen::Vector4d is only used as an example, more generally the issue arises for all fixed-size vectorizable Eigen types.
Cause 4: Compiler making a wrong assumption on stack alignment (for instance GCC on Windows)
This is a must-read for people using GCC on Windows (like MinGW or TDM-GCC). If you have this assertion failure in an innocent function declaring a local variable like this:
void foo()
{
//...
}
Note that here, Eigen::Quaternionf is only used as an example, more generally the issue arises for all fixed-size vectorizable Eigen types.
Explanation
fixed-size vectorizable Eigen objects must absolutely be created at 16-byte-aligned locations, otherwise SIMD instructions adressing them will crash.
Eigen normally takes care of these alignment issues for you, by setting an alignment attribute on them and by overloading their "operator new".
However there are a few corner cases where these alignment settings get overridden: they are the possible causes for this assertion.
I don't care about vectorization, how do I get rid of that stuff?
Two possibilities: Define EIGEN_DONT_ALIGN_STATICALLY. That disables all 128-bit static alignment code, while keeping 128-bit heap alignment. This has the effect of disabling vectorization for fixed-size objects (like Matrix4d) while keeping vectorization of dynamic-size objects (like MatrixXd). But do note that this breaks ABI compatibility with the default behavior of 128-bit static alignment.
Or define both EIGEN_DONT_VECTORIZE and EIGEN_DISABLE_UNALIGNED_ARRAY_ASSERT. This keeps the 128-bit alignment code and thus preserves ABI compatibility, but completely disables vectorization.