Editing Code refactoring (section)

==Hardware refactoring==
While the term ''refactoring'' originally referred exclusively to refactoring of software code, in recent years code written in [[hardware description language]]s has also been refactored. The term ''hardware refactoring'' is used as a shorthand term for refactoring of code in hardware description languages. Since hardware description languages are not considered to be [[programming language]]s by most hardware engineers,<ref>[[Hardware description languages#HDL and programming languages]]</ref> hardware refactoring is to be considered a separate field from traditional code refactoring.

Automated refactoring of analog hardware descriptions (in [[VHDL-AMS]]) has been proposed by Zeng and Huss.<ref>Kaiping Zeng, Sorin A. Huss, "Architecture refinements by code refactoring of behavioral VHDL-AMS models". ISCAS 2006</ref> In their approach, refactoring preserves the simulated behavior of a hardware design. The non-functional measurement that improves is that refactored code can be processed by standard synthesis tools, while the original code cannot. Refactoring of digital hardware description languages, albeit manual refactoring, has also been investigated by [[Synopsys]] [[fellow]] Mike Keating.<ref>M. Keating :"Complexity, Abstraction, and the Challenges of Designing Complex Systems", in DAC'08 tutorial [http://www.dac.com/events/eventdetails.aspx?id=77-130] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160328163412/https://dac.com/events/eventdetails.aspx?id=77-130|date=2016-03-28}}"Bridging a Verification Gap: C++ to RTL for Practical Design"</ref><ref>M. Keating, P. Bricaud: ''Reuse Methodology Manual for System-on-a-Chip Designs'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.</ref> His target is to make complex systems easier to understand, which increases the designers' productivity.