diff --git a/llvm/lib/Target/RISCV/MCTargetDesc/RISCVAsmBackend.cpp b/llvm/lib/Target/RISCV/MCTargetDesc/RISCVAsmBackend.cpp
--- a/llvm/lib/Target/RISCV/MCTargetDesc/RISCVAsmBackend.cpp
+++ b/llvm/lib/Target/RISCV/MCTargetDesc/RISCVAsmBackend.cpp
@@ -354,20 +354,21 @@

 bool RISCVAsmBackend::writeNopData(raw_ostream &OS, uint64_t Count,
                                    const MCSubtargetInfo *STI) const {
-  bool HasStdExtC = STI->getFeatureBits()[RISCV::FeatureStdExtC];
-  unsigned MinNopLen = HasStdExtC ? 2 : 4;
-
-  if ((Count % MinNopLen) != 0)
-    return false;
-
   // The canonical nop on RISC-V is addi x0, x0, 0.
   for (; Count >= 4; Count -= 4)
     OS.write("\x13\0\0\0", 4);

   // The canonical nop on RVC is c.nop.
-  if (Count && HasStdExtC)
-    OS.write("\x01\0", 2);
-
+  if (STI->getFeatureBits()[RISCV::FeatureStdExtC])
+    for (; Count >= 2; Count -= 2)
+      OS.write("\x01\0", 2);
+
+  // If the count is not 4-byte aligned, we must be writing data into the text
+  // section (otherwise we have unaligned instructions, and thus have far
+  // bigger problems), so just write zeros instead.  This also may occur for
+  // non-standard data sections which are not declared and thus get detected as
+  // text rather than data.
+  OS.write_zeros(Count);
   return true;
 }

diff --git a/llvm/test/MC/RISCV/nop-slide.ll b/llvm/test/MC/RISCV/nop-slide.ll
new file mode 100644
--- /dev/null
+++ b/llvm/test/MC/RISCV/nop-slide.ll
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+; RUN: llc -mtriple riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu -filetype obj -o - %s | llvm-objdump -t - | FileCheck %s
+
+target datalayout = "e-m:e-p:64:64-i64:64-i128:128-n64-S128"
+target triple = "riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu"
+
+@b = dso_local global i8 0, section ".init.data", align 1
+@c= dso_local global ptr null, section ".init.data", align 8
+
+; CHECK: 0000000000000000 g     O .init.data	0000000000000001 b
+; CHECK: 0000000000000008 g     O .init.data	0000000000000008 c