Outstanding piece. Towards the end, Ken Shirrif has a good discussion around this: "[...] Still others would allow these functions to be packaged in a few chips, which would collectively make up the microprocessor.[...]"

Along those lines, there was also a set of "bit-sliced" chips from AMD, which looked very interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Am2900

P.S. The "Mick & Brick" book: https://www.amazon.com/Bit-slice-microprocessor-design-John-...