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More-advanced behavioural specification:

Many RTL synthesisers support an implied program counter (state machine inference).

         reg [2:0] yout;
         always
               begin
               @(posedge clk) yout = 1;
               @(posedge clk) yout = 4; 
               @(posedge clk) yout = 3;
               end

In this example, not only is there a thread with current point of execution, but the implied `program counter' advances only partially around the body of the always loop on each clock edge. Clearly the compiler or synthesiser has to make up flip-flops not explicitly mentioned by the designer, to hold the current `program counter' value.

None of the event control statements is conditional in the example, but the method of compilation is readily extended to support this: it amounts to the program counter taking conditional branches. For example, the middle event control could be prefixed with 'if (din)'.

               if (din) @(posedge clk) yout = 4; 

(C) 2008-10, DJ Greaves, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory.