object assigned a value but never read - does this effect synthesis?

Perhaps you're correct - could you elaborate a little more?

I understand that declaring something as reg doesn't mean that it will be synthesized as an actual sequential element. The synthesizer could very well turn it into combinational logic - but how do you know that its being interpreted as a group of combinational cells? Since it hasn't made it into the final circuit - I'm not sure how to know what the synthesizer has interpreted it as.

Secondly, you said that you used real registers - what exactly was this implementation? A look at the experimental code you used would be helpful for this.

Thanks again.

-k