Patent ID: 7934183

Claim:
A method for executing HDL (hardware description language) code, the method comprising: receiving, at a hardware apparatus, HDL code which describes an RTL (register transfer level) design, wherein the HDL code includes a conditional statement which determines a value of an output variable, and wherein the conditional statement uses a control expression to determine whether to execute a first set of HDL statements to determine the value of the output variable, or whether to execute a second set of HDL statements to determine the value of the output variable; and in response to determining that a value of the control expression is indeterminate, the hardware apparatus performing the following operations: executing the first set of HDL statements to determine a first temporary-value which is associated with the output variable, executing the second set of HDL statements to determine a second temporary-value which is associated with the output variable, determining the value of the output variable using the first temporary-value and the second temporary-value, and storing the value of the output variable.