Final answer:
The total latency of an ld instruction is significantly longer in a non-pipelined processor, where each stage occurs sequentially, compared to a pipelined processor, where multiple instructions overlap in their stages, improving throughput.
Step-by-step explanation:
The total latency of an ld instruction (load instruction) in a pipelined and non-pipelined processor can differ significantly.
In a non-pipelined processor, the instruction must pass through several stages sequentially before the next instruction can begin. These stages typically include fetch, decode, execute, memory access, and write-back. The latency is the total time it takes for the instruction to pass through all these stages.
In a pipelined processor, multiple instructions can be processed at different stages simultaneously, allowing the processor to work on different parts of several instructions at once. This means that while the latency of a single instruction may not dramatically decrease, the overall throughput of the processor is improved.
For an ld instruction, in a non-pipelined architecture, if we assume that each stage takes one cycle, the instruction would have a latency equal to the number of stages, typically 4 or 5 cycles. In contrast, in a pipelined architecture, after the pipeline is filled, an instruction can be completed every cycle, leading to a much lower effective latency for consecutive instructions.