[AdamH12113]

You’re mixing up time and frequency. For a signal to propagate through multiple logic gates in one clock cycle, each gate must switch in a fraction of a cycle. That means a single gate could switch more often (higher frequency) if it were by itself. But it’s not.

(Technically, many gates do switch more than once per cycle since their inputs change at different times. But their outputs are only latched at the end of the cycle, so any extra switching is ignored.)