You said it has a delay.
I agree it should have a delay.

But in this setup all the gates update all at once.

Nope. Once the red alloy lifts the latch, they all update one after another down the line until it reaches the end.

Yes, they should all update, but with delays - not all in the very same moment.

When I replace every other busxcvr with a bundled cable, each transceiver takes it's 2 tick to repeat the signal as I would expect

It already does that. When they are all turned on, the first one updates, then 2 ticks later, the second display lights up, 2 ticks later another, and so on.

That's how I expect it to behave. But it is not doing that.
All of the displays light up at once!

Im telling you, thats impossible. Signal only propagates to one block at a time, only in actual wires does the signal check for all connected cables to bounce to. Gates (besides array) are blind to how many other things they are connected to. You update one side, a rs tick later it does something.

I am not sure I understand what exactly is impossible - fixing it, or it actually doing what I swear it's doing.

Do you want a video of it flash-appearing on all displays?

No, i have it set up the same way as you do, but i can't reproduce this. Its working, so maybe whatever i changed recently made it work..

Will ivestigate

let me figure out the actual conditions here.. I'll add a new post when i figure it out.

I just tried building it in another direction. It works in another direction.
It seems to depend on orientation

In my build where it does that the signal was running from south to north.
When I run the signal from north to south, it works as expected.

I have it all in one chunk.

Okay, confirmed. Though its not instant, just the rendering changes at once.

I build two lines in opposite directions with lamps on ends.
Even the lamp on the visually faster (south->north) line turns on earlier than the other one.

I built a longer version and managed to capture the timing difference.

fixed via 744f0eb