Instruction Cycles to execute a variable

[shaswat]

I am working on 16 bit micro-controller (MSP430f67791A) and using IAR compiler. My question is that someone tell me that in a 16 bit micro-controller, if you take a 8bit variable then the CPU would take more instruction cycle to execute it rather than a 16 bit variable.

After his words, I was totally confused and tried to find out on web but didn't find anything.

Does anyone have any idea about this??

 

[FvM]

MSP430 has instructions with byte access, they have the same number of instruction cycles indicated in the family reference as word accesses.

You could still consume more instruction cycles for byte varianbles if the compiler needs/wants to "transcribe" some byte operations by multiple instructions. Check the compiler listings if this is the case.