Could ROM be used to store the instructions of an OS?
Would it noticably increase speed?
Would it be cheaper?
Would it be much smaller?
Here are some questions I have about pipelines.
Are pipelines simply hierarchical memory?
Are pipelines only useful to reduce cost?
Why not just load a whole bunch of data onto a single bus? You could use a register as wide as the RAM, say a megabyte. Then, select one 16th, and output that to another circuit which selects one 16th, and continue until you are left with 16 bits. (It would take 5 of those steps.) You could use
2-d addressing/muxing for the selection circuits.