Reason for extra NOPs instructions ???

[Manoj K Sharma <msharma@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,
I have recently shifted from x86 based targets to Pentium based. This
obviously resulted in shift from gcc for I80486 to gcc pentium cross
compiler.

I see some increase in my .text segment size(compare to gcc for I80486).
On investigating it, I found that it is mainly because lot of NOPs being
insterted in between. This results in bigger .text segment than what I
see in case of gcc for I80486.

Here is one such example.

ac:   70 00                	      jo     ae <FTPAlgGlblVarInit+0xae>
      ae:	90                   	nop    
      af:	90                   	nop    
      b0:	90                   	nop    
      b1:	90                   	nop    
      b2:	90                   	nop    
      b3:	90                   	nop    
      b4:	90                   	nop    
      b5:	90                   	nop    
      b6:	90                   	nop    
      b7:	90                   	nop    
      b8:	90                   	nop    
      b9:	90                   	nop    
      ba:	90                   	nop    
      bb:	90                   	nop    
      bc:	90                   	nop    
      bd:	90                   	nop    
      be:	90                   	nop    
      bf:	90                   	nop    
      c0:	0d 0a 20 46 54       	or     $0x5446200a,%eax

Could some one please explain whats the idea behind inserting these many
NOPs ???

Thanks,
Manoj