What is the greatest speedup (in terms of throughput) possible with pipelining? You do not need to worry about the register timing constraints (e. g. delay, setup, hold). Explain your reasoning

The greatest speedup possible with pipelining is 2.5 times

Explanation:

As we know

Span of stage = Maximum span of any span

As stage B has the maximum duration of time, So

Duration of time of each stage = Time duration of Stage B = 8 ns

Now calculate the total time without pipeline = Duration of Stage A + Duration of Stage B + Duration of Stage C + Duration of Stage D = 5 ns + 8 ns + 4 ns + 3 ns = 20 ns

So the greatest speedup can be calculated as follow

Greatest speedup = Total time without pipeline / Duration of time of each stage = 20 ns / 8 ns = 2.5 times