Integration

CHIP: In our chip design, we integrate different IPs or blocks like adders, multipliers, Processor, Bluetooth etc. Connect them with each other through wires and create chip A. This is normally done by chip designer. Performance of this chip A then depends on what components are used on chip and how they are connected with each other. This complete chip then talks with some other chip and there might be thousands of chips to make one complex system. It is then very difficult and complex for system engineers to keep complete system running and creates one product.

LIFE: In our life if we consider our family as one chip and Father , Mother and children as their components then we can consider Nature acts as chip designer who has integrated all family member into one family. Each family member is connected through different type of wires and same way has created many families. Nature again acts as system engineer and then integrate all these families into one community, all community into one region and then so on creates complete World as one product. As a contrast to chip designer and system designer, it is obvious to mention that Nature is very excellent designer and has created very complex design - World.

Crosstalk

CHIP : As Chips are becoming smaller and smaller interconnects (wires) between two transistors are also coming closer and closer. For example in a city if there are too many buildings then distance between two roads becomes smaller and smaller due to lack of space.
Now, when voltage changes on one wire it affects other wire's (adjacent to it) voltage. This is called crosstalk. Crosstalk causes timing violation in timing or functional problems.
Precautions are made by keeping seperators between two wires or by keeping two wires far away which are changing too much with respect to each other.

LIFE: In life two persons are like interconnects(wires). Today's life is too much complex that there are many people whose life comes closer and closer to each other. If it comes too close then happenings in Person A's life will affect person B's life. In life also it is good if we keep two contradictory people far away from each other, otherwise it will lead to some conflicts in life. It is better to have some person who can act like a bridge between two. Or best will be to keep them away.

Note: I am only correlating and not explaining.

Place and route

I will first explain what my professor told me when I took related course in USC .

Professor : Suppose we have a city. There are no building and roads. You know what is x (length) and y (breadth) dimension of complete city. Now you are given "n" number of buildings and you are given information that which building is connected to which building through some Road. Now your task is to place and connect all buildings so that they can be fit inside city and there shold be no overlapping of roads or building and they should be connected through roads (as mentioned earlier).

Chip : We have one chip. We know what will be x and y dimension of chip. Now, we have millions of gates/transistors(buildings) connected to each other through wires. Our job is to make sure that all transistors placed on the chip and connected to each other and routed well.

(I will take little hard correlation...)
Life: I see two dimensions of life : x - what we want from us , y- what others want want from us. studies,job,home,car are transistors which are connected to each other. For example our job is connected to our studies. then it inturn connected to what kind of car we take etc.. Now our task is to find out how to place all these things on our life. and place them well and connect them properly.

The difference between chip and life is that in Chip we have x and y dimensions defined by customer. In life it all depends on us which dimension we need to increase. Other difference is in Chip x,y dimension nad no of transistors are defined and then we do place and route. But in life we dont know either x and y dimension nor what all things we need to route in complete life. I would say it changes as time passes.

Note : I know I may not correlated it well, but it was hard too..

Setup and Hold time

CHIP : In chip design in between two flip flops we have some combonatorial logic. Output of first flip flop is combined with few other signals which are new to this stage and then become a new signal which goes to second flip flop. We need to make sure that this final signal should reach before clock edge of second flipflop (setup time) and should be stable after certain time of clock edge (hold time). We need this stable period because there is some logic inside flip flop which needs to give a definite answer at output : 1 or 0.
If Signal changes its value during this window then output of flipflop becomes undeterminent(metastable). And it may take more time to go to 0 or 1 eventually. Setup time is generally bigger than hold time in value.

LIFE: In our life also flip flops corresponds to starting of our different stages of our life. Like child age, Teen age, young , marriage, old age etc. When we enter into one stage (teen age flip flop) then before entering into young stage (flip flop) we are in teen age logic and apart from what we learnt in child age we get some other new factors involved like college,new friends, other priorities.. Before entering into new stage (young age) we need to make sure that we have stable state(setup time), i.e. we have finalized results of all other factors on us during teen age stage, so that during the stage transition we should know what is our stable state is and what should be our next state in next stage.
Also, one we have taken decision then we should keep our input of young age the same one(hold time) so that we should get some time to analyze that whatever decision we have taken is good. If we change our input of young age then it may make us in confusion state (metastable state).
Similar to chip design our setup time of transtion from one stage to other stage is also greater than hold time.

LEARNING :We should be stable during our major transition of phases/stages in life.

architecture

CHIP : Today no chip is designed from scratch.. Every chip is derived from previous chips with some changes in specifications based on customer/market requirement. When architecture of chip is started then old chip architecture is taken as reference and few changes in register definitions or memory or other module addition/subtraction/modification is done. Once architecture is made then chip is given to designers and chip is made. It is obvious that new chip will always have many features of old chip with better features added. but sometimes few old features can be problematic for one customer and good for for other customer.

LIFE : Similarly child(new chip) also doesnt have architecture from scratch. It has almost all features of parents(old chip) with similar architecture but along with new and improved features as per environment(customer above) needs. It is again true that this child might be good for certain environments(customer) and bad for others.

synchronization

Due to deep submicron technologies we can put more logic in hardware now. This has many implications at silicon level. But at architecture level we have one issue of synchronization. Since we have different applications running on same chip they run at different frequencies and it leads to synchronization issues. We use different techniques to synchronize between different frequency domains. If we dont synchronize then there is a probability based on sender/receiver freq, flip flop characteristics, signal freq etc which can cause metastability in signal at receiver side and may cause wrong signal to be captured... then depending upon how critical that value was our chip may malfunction.

Simlarly in our life (as chip) also we have different frequency domains like work life, friend's life, family life, personal life.. If we dont synchronize between these domains while sending one observation from one domain to other then it may cause damage. We should keep some synchronizers which converts whatever we think in our work life , to our personal life domain at personal domain frequency. if we dont do it then it may cause sometimes metastability in life and sometimes if not interpret corrected in persoanl life by other personal members then can cause damage.

Good part is though in both life and chip there is a high cost for rectifying synchronization issue, but there is always a way to rectify it and it is not impossible to do it.. You loose something but after all it is life/chip...
Also, as in chip we should find synchronization issues at architecture level only. Same way in life we should try to see it at early stages.. More late we react, it costs more.