To make it easier to reason about whether the program will terminate. This is an important part of writing high-assurance software. From the actual patent text

To make it easier to reason about whether the program will terminate. This is an important part of writing high-assurance software. From the actual patent text (https://www.google.com/patents/US7788659 https://www.google.com/patents/US7788659): "Because of the possibility of looping and branching within loops, a brute force attempt to enumerate the paths through a computer program will most likely fail. Therefore, there is a need for a method of converting a computer program that contains loops to one that does not." More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_analysis