Hi All, Please let me know if this is not the right place to ask this question. I had read somewhere that a 32 bit processor can read/write only and only 32 bits in any one cycle. So, I thought that if I needed a 'char' then 32 bits would be read from memory into registers and then would be manipulated there to get a 'char'. As such I thought that it was logical that operations on int are faster than on chars. I was reading an ARM processor manual some time ago and I saw that processor has instructions to read a single byte too. So, I am confused now. I earlier thought that the compiler generates such code that reads in 32 bits and then manipulates those bits to get an 8-bit char value. Now, ARM processor manual says that the processor can be instructed to read only one byte too. But the processor registers are 32 bits. so, this is again confusing. This doesn't look very straightforward to me because if the data bus is 32 bits wide then probably we are still reading 32 bits. So, the question is: 1. Can only 8 bits be read from memory in a 32 bit register? 2. When a processor gives an instruction to read only 8 bits, then is it manipulating the 32 bits by itself? 3. If the address of my 'char' is 0x5, then do we only read the memory location 0x5, or from 0x4 to 0x7, and then manipulate it to get the value at 0x5 in the lowest 8 bits of the 32 bit register. Any help would be appreciated. YKHAN __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
