A classic RISC processor pipeline partitions instruction processing into five autonomous stages: Instruction Fetch (IF), Instruction Decode (ID), Execute (EX), Memory Access (MEM), and Write-Back (WB). Operating concurrently on successive instruction streams, pipelining dramatically elevates processor throughput without increasing individual instruction latency. Under hazard-free execution, pipelining approaches an ideal performance metric of one completed instruction per clock cycle (CPI ≈ 1).