When digital designers talk to each other about state, they draw logic clouds and a box, with a clock input, that holds state. The logic clouds are disjoint -

When digital designers talk to each other about state, they draw logic clouds and a box, with a clock input, that holds state. The logic clouds are disjoint - there's always a box between them. Yes, there are two kinds of boxes (flip-flops and latches) and how the clock works varies (and there are often multiple clocks, and the clocks may be driven by logic). More to the point, I'd argue that the hardware designers job is to manage state and logic so a language which makes them explicit is a good thing. It's possible to design a language that works exactly like that. The simulator is easy to make very fast and is easily parallelizable. (The logic clouds are acyclic. Moreover, everything that needs to be evaluated at a given clock event or combination thereof can be determined AND partitioned statically.) The synthesis is also easy. Note that SystemC is NOT such a language.