Smalsa,

Depends on the nature of the interrupts.

If they latch until serviced, you can OR the 16 such that any and all cause a single interrupt request who's service routines reads the latched states and performs that which is required with programatic priority.

Considering the '51 spent years with only two levels of interrupt, if your 16 sources neatly divide into two tiers of interrupt priority then OR high priority to one std. 8051 interrupt (set to "hi priority") and "OR" those that remain to the alternate interrupt (set to lower priority).

Alternatively, OR then together to cause a single interrupt but also route them to to simple priority encoder for recognition and positional priority.

regards,
p