diff --git a/arch/Kconfig b/arch/Kconfig
index 6093c0b..b0fabfa 100644
--- a/arch/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/Kconfig
@@ -27,6 +27,25 @@
 	  for kernel debugging, non-intrusive instrumentation and testing.
 	  If in doubt, say "N".
 
+config HAVE_EFFICIENT_UNALIGNED_ACCESS
+	def_bool n
+	help
+	  Some architectures are unable to perform unaligned accesses
+	  without the use of get_unaligned/put_unaligned. Others are
+	  unable to perform such accesses efficiently (e.g. trap on
+	  unaligned access and require fixing it up in the exception
+	  handler.)
+
+	  This symbol should be selected by an architecture if it can
+	  perform unaligned accesses efficiently to allow different
+	  code paths to be selected for these cases. Some network
+	  drivers, for example, could opt to not fix up alignment
+	  problems with received packets if doing so would not help
+	  much.
+
+	  See Documentation/unaligned-memory-access.txt for more
+	  information on the topic of unaligned memory accesses.
+
 config KRETPROBES
 	def_bool y
 	depends on KPROBES && HAVE_KRETPROBES
diff --git a/arch/powerpc/Kconfig b/arch/powerpc/Kconfig
index a487671..de6b49c 100644
--- a/arch/powerpc/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/powerpc/Kconfig
@@ -112,6 +112,7 @@
 	select HAVE_FTRACE
 	select HAVE_IDE
 	select HAVE_IOREMAP_PROT
+	select HAVE_EFFICIENT_UNALIGNED_ACCESS
 	select HAVE_KPROBES
 	select HAVE_ARCH_KGDB
 	select HAVE_KRETPROBES
diff --git a/arch/x86/Kconfig b/arch/x86/Kconfig
index b2ddfcf..66f3ab0 100644
--- a/arch/x86/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/x86/Kconfig
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@
 	select HAVE_FTRACE
 	select HAVE_KVM if ((X86_32 && !X86_VOYAGER && !X86_VISWS && !X86_NUMAQ) || X86_64)
 	select HAVE_ARCH_KGDB if !X86_VOYAGER
+	select HAVE_EFFICIENT_UNALIGNED_ACCESS
 
 config ARCH_DEFCONFIG
 	string