There are two parts to a synchronous design - the combinatorial bits, and the flip-flops. /----\ |-----| / \ | Q| | COMB |---|D | \ /

There are two parts to a synchronous design - the combinatorial bits, and the flip-flops. /----\ |-----| / \ | Q| | COMB |---|D | \ / |>CLK | \----/ |-----| I think what he's getting at is that any combinational logic that goes in a register is defined in one place - he's not doing complex statements. It sounds like he's doing a very (terse) RTL style. This makes it very clear what your synthesizer will do with it - he isn't trying to be clever on the RTL front. We should email him and ask!