An invention is provided for building configurable designs synthesizable to gates. The invention includes creating a configurable design using an HDL. The configurable design has a plurality of instantiated configurable constructs that can be optionally included in a design. Basically, the configurable design is an all-inclusive design having a large set of features, including varying interfaces, FIFO depths, and other features. Then, a derived design is generated by removing configurable constructs from the configurable design based on a specification, typically a customer specification received from a customer for a particular design. The specification indicates which configurable constructs are to be included in a derived design. Thereafter, the derived design is synthesizable in logic.