Book excerpt: Synthesis Techniques and Optimization for Reconfigurable Systems discusses methods used to model reconfigurable applications at the system level, many of which could be incorporated directly into modern compilers. The book also discusses a framework for reconfigurable system synthesis, which bridges the gap between application-level compiler analysis and high-level device synthesis. The development of this framework (discussed in Chapter 5), and the creation of application analysis which further optimize its output (discussed in Chapters 7, 8, and 9), represent over four years of rigorous investigation within UCLA's Embedded and Reconfigurable Laboratory (ERLab) and UCSB's Extensible, Programmable and Reconfigirable Embedded SystemS (ExPRESS) Group. The research of these systems has not yet matured, and we continually strive to develop data and methods, which will extend the collective understanding of reconfigurable system synthesis.