Naive question about hardware engineering terminology

I tried to post this in the "Electronic Elementary Questions" section, but it would refuse to open a new topic without giving any error message. After peeling my eyes for a while I saw a tiny "forum is locked" message somewhere on that page, so I gave up. So, I am posting this here, please advise as to where the right place for this post would be.

Hello, I am a software engineer building a piece of software which is attempting to draw some analogies from hardware engineering and I need help with some terminology.

I will try to express what I want as clearly as I can, but I am sure I will fail miserably, so based on your answers I will probably have to rephrase my questions. So, this is a rough draft, please bare with me.

My software is a software module manager and it draws an analogy between software modules and hardware chips. Let me make clear that I am not trying to describe, emulate, or otherwise model hardware. I am writing a piece of software which is a tool to aid software engineering, and I just want to base my paradigm on the existing hardware engineering paradigm.

The module manager demands that every module must have well-defined "terminals" through which it can receive incoming calls and also place outgoing calls. So, my first question is: is there such a thing in hardware engineering as a distinction between chip terminals used for incoming signals versus terminals used for outgoing signals? And if so, then how do you call these terminals? In software terminals can collectively be called interfaces, and then with respect to whether they are "incoming" or "outgoing" they can be called inputs and outputs, or entrypoints and exitpoints, but I'd like to know the terminology used by hardware engineers.

Secondly, my module manager deals with each module at three distinct levels:

1. at the level of a product specification,
2. at the level of system planning, and
3. at the level of software runtime.

Continuing to draw the analogies with hardware engineering:

1. the "product specification" level would correspond to the information that you would find about a chip in an electronics catalog;
2. the "system planning" level would correspond to one instance (among many possible instances) of such a chip taking part in a schematic diagram; and
3. the "software runtime" level would correspond to an actual physical chip whose terminals are soldered on a PCB and electrical currents are running through them.

So, my question is whether there are any terms that are generally used for the entities "chip", "input terminal" and "output terminal" that are different in these three levels. In other words, whether hardware engineers perchance tend to use a different word for a piece of circuitry that appears in a product catalog, a different word for the same piece of circuitry when it is taking part in a schematic diagram, and a different word for its actual physical realization on a PCB.

I have more questions, but first let's see whether these will get me anywhere!

Thank you in advance for your responses, and for even reading thus far!

So, my question is whether there are any terms that are generally used for the entities "chip", "input terminal" and "output terminal" that are different in these three levels. In other words, whether hardware engineers perchance tend to use a different word for a piece of circuitry that appears in a product catalog, a different word for the same piece of circuitry when it is taking part in a schematic diagram, and a different word for its actual physical realization on a PCB.

Click to expand...

There is no difference in the name of the chip in any of the "3 levels you described", a hardware engineer will understand clearly.

But, a hardware engineer may name a device in very different ways...

0- When the engineer doesn't know or doesn't care about the function, he simply says "the chip".

Or else an enginer may refer to it by:

01- It's name: "adder", "shift register", "and gate" (if there are no other gates simply "the gate").

02- It's part number: 4020, 7400, 324 (LM324, can also be called "the LM" if there's no other).

03- It's PCB device number: D1, U10, Q2.

04- It's in-circuit function: "the damper", "the freewheling", "the shunt".

Same for the pins.