Question on Alignment requiremnet

Hi All, I have some doubts on the alignment requirement.It would be really helpful,if someone can shed some light on this. Why there are so many different types of alignment like 4 byte, 8 byte,16 byte ?.My exact question is, in a 32 bit machine(I assume processor reads data in 4 bytes),how 16 byte alignment makes different from 4 byte alignment ?.How this will influence the processor performance ?. - With Regards Subin Gangadharan Everything should be made as simple as possible,but not simpler.