The instruction cycle may be of one, two or three bytes.
During the fetch cycle, an instruction of the program (op code) is extracted from the memory locations and copied in the instruction register (IR) of C.P.U.
The op code of the instruction copied in the instruction register (IR) is decoded during the execution cycle to perform the specific activities.
It may further be mentioned that an instruction cycle may take one to five machine cycles.
Generally, first machine cycle known as op code fetch cycle, has either four or six T-states and the remaining machine cycles called execution cycles, have two or three T-states.
A T-state represents one clock cycle.
The NOP is the shortest instruction which takes only one machine cycle with four T-states.
However, the CALL is the longest instruction which takes five machine cycles with 18 T states.