text:
Microbotics

Microbotics (or microrobotics) is the field of miniature robotics, in particular mobile robots with characteristic dimensions less than 1 mm. The term can also be used for robots capable of handling micrometer size components.

History
Microbots were born thanks to the appearance of the microcontroller in the last decade of the 20th century, and the appearance of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) on silicon, although many microbots do not use silicon for mechanical components other than sensors. The earliest research and conceptual design of such small robots was conducted in the early 1970s in (then) classified research for U.S. intelligence agencies. Applications envisioned at that time included prisoner of war rescue assistance and electronic intercept missions. The underlying miniaturization support technologies were not fully developed at that time, so that progress in prototype development was not immediately forthcoming from this early set of calculations and concept design. As of 2008, the smallest microrobots use a scratch drive actuator.

The development of wireless connections, especially Wi-Fi (i.e. in household networks) has greatly increased the communication capacity of microbots, and consequently their ability to coordinate with other microbots to carry out more complex tasks. Indeed, much recent research has focused on microbot communication, including a 1,024 robot swarm at Harvard University that assembles itself into various shapes; and manufacturing microbots at SRI International for DARPA's "MicroFactory for Macro Products" program that can build lightweight, high-strength structures.

Microbots called xenobots have also been built using biological tissues instead of metal and electronics. Xenobots avoid some of the technological and environmental complications of traditional microbots as they are self-powered, biodegradable, and biocompatible.

Definitions
While the "micro" prefix has been used subjectively to mean "small", standardizing on length scales avoids confusion. Thus a nanorobot would have characteristic dimensions at or below 1 micrometer, or manipulate components on the 1 to 1000 nm size range. A microrobot would have characteristic dimensions less than 1 millimeter, a millirobot would have dimensions less than a cm, a mini-robot would have dimensions less than 10 cm, and a small robot would have dimensions less than 100 cm.

Many sources also describe robots larger than 1 millimeter as microbots or robots larger than 1 micrometer as nanobots.

Design considerations
The way microrobots move around is a function of their purpose and necessary size. At submicron sizes, the physical world demands rather bizarre ways of getting around. The Reynolds number for airborne robots is less than unity; the viscous forces dominate the  inertial forces, so “flying” could use the viscosity of air, rather than Bernoulli's principle of lift. Robots moving through fluids may require rotating flagella like the motile form of  E. coli. Hopping is stealthy and energy-efficient; it allows the robot to negotiate the surfaces of a variety of terrains. Pioneering calculations (Solem 1994) examined possible behaviors based on physical realities.

One of the major challenges in developing a microrobot is to achieve motion using a very limited power supply. The microrobots can use a small lightweight battery source like a coin cell or can scavenge power from the surrounding environment in the form of vibration or light energy. Microrobots are also now using biological motors as power sources, such as flagellated Serratia marcescens, to draw chemical power from the surrounding fluid to actuate the robotic device. These biorobots can be directly controlled by stimuli such as chemotaxis or galvanotaxis with several control schemes available. A popular alternative to an onboard battery is to power the robots using externally induced power. Examples include the use of electromagnetic fields, ultrasound and light to activate and control micro robots.

The 2022 study focused on a photo-biocatalytic approach for the "design of light-driven microrobots with applications in microbiology and biomedicine".

Locomotion of microrobots
Microrobots employ various locomotion methods to navigate through different environments, from solid surfaces to fluids. These methods are often inspired by biological systems and are designed to be effective at the micro-scale. Several factors need to be maximized (precision, speed, stability), and others have to be minimized (energy consumption, energy loss) in the design and operation of microrobot locomotion in order to guarantee accurate, effective, and efficient movement.

When describing the locomotion of microrobots, several key parameters are used to characterize and evaluate their movement, including stride length and transportation costs. A stride refers to a complete cycle of movement that includes all the steps or phases necessary for an organism or robot to move forward by repeating a specific sequence of actions. Stride length (𝞴s) is the distance covered by a microrobot in one complete cycle of its locomotion mechanism. Cost of transport (CoT) defines the work required to move a unit of mass of a microrobot a unit of distance

Surface locomotion
Microrobots that use surface locomotion can move in a variety of ways, including walking, crawling, rolling, or jumping. These microrobots meet different challenges, such as gravity and friction. One of the parameters describing surface locomotion is the Frounde number, defined as:

$$Fr=\frac{v^2}{g*\lambda_s}$$

Where v is motion speed, g is the gravitational field, and 𝞴s is a stride length. A microrobot demonstrating a low Froude number moves slower and more stable as gravitational forces dominate, while a high Froude number indicates that inertial forces are more significant, allowing faster and potentially less stable movement.

Crawling is one of the most typical surface locomotion types. The mechanisms employed by microrobots for crawling can differ but usually include the synchronized movement of multiple legs or appendages. The mechanism of the microrobots' movements is often inspired by animals such as insects, reptiles, and small mammals. An example of a crawling microrobot is RoBeetle. The autonomous microrobot weighs 88 milligrams (approximately the weight of three rice grains). The robot is powered by the catalytic combustion of methanol. The design relies on controllable NiTi-Pt–based catalytic artificial micromuscles with a mechanical control mechanism.

Other options for actuating microrobots' surface locomotion include magnetic, electromagnetic, piezoelectric, electrostatic, and optical actuation.

Swimming locomotion
Swimming microrobots are designed to operate in 3D through fluid environments, like biological fluids or water. To achieve effective movements, locomotion strategies are adopted from small aquatic animals or microorganisms, such as flagellar propulsion, pulling, chemical propulsion, jet propulsion, and tail undulation. Swimming microrobots, in order to move forward, must drive water backward.

Microrobots move in the low Reynolds number regime due to their small sizes and low operating speeds, as well as high viscosity of the fluids they navigate. At this level, viscous forces dominate over inertial forces. This requires a different approach in the design compared to swimming at the macroscale in order to achieve effective movements. The low Reynolds number also allows for accurate movements, which makes it good application in medicine, micro-manipulation tasks, and environmental monitoring.

Dominating viscous (Stokes) drag forces Tdrag on the robot balances the propulsive force Fp generated by a swimming mechanism.

$$T=T_(drag)=\frac{bv}{m}$$

Where b is the viscous drag coefficient, v is motion speed, and m is the body mass.

One of the examples of a swimming microrobot is a helical magnetic microrobot consisting of a spiral tail and a magnetic head body. This design is inspired by the flagellar motion of bacteria. By applying a magnetic torque to a helical microrobot within a low-intensity rotating magnetic field, the rotation can be transformed into linear motion. This conversion is highly effective in low Reynolds number environments due to the unique helical structure of the microrobot. By altering the external magnetic field, the direction of the spiral microrobot's motion can be easily reversed.

At Air-Fluid Interface locomotion
In the specific instance when microrobots are at the air-fluid interface, they can take advantage of surface tension and forces provided by capillary motion. At the point where air and a liquid, most often water, come together, it is possible to establish an interface capable of supporting the weight of the microrobots through the work of surface tension. Cohesion between molecules of a liquid creates surface tension, which otherwise creates ‘skin’ over the water’s surface, letting the microrobots float instead of sinking. Through such concepts, microrobots could perform specific locomotion functions, including climbing, walking, levitating, floating, and or even jumping, by exploring the characteristics of the air-fluid interface.

Due to the surface tension ,σ, the buoyancy force, Fb, and the curvature force, Fc, play the most important roles, particularly in deciding whether the microrobot will float or sink on the surface of the liquid. This can be expressed as

$$\sigma=F_b+F_c$$

Fb is obtained by integrating the hydrostatic pressure over the area of the body in contact with the water. In contrast, Fc is obtained by integrating the curvature pressure over this area or, alternatively, the vertical component of the surface tension, $$\sigma\sin\theta$$, along the contact perimeter.

One example of a climbing, walking microrobot that utilizes air-fluid locomotion is the Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot with Electroadhesion (HAMR-E). The control system of HAMR-E is developed to allow the robot to function in a flexible and maneuverable manner in a challenging environment. Its features include its ability to move on horizontal, vertical, and inverted planes, which is facilitated by the electro-adhesion system. This uses electric fields to create electrostatic attraction, causing the robot to stick and move on different surfaces. With four compliant and electro-adhesion footpads, HAMR-E can safely grasp and slide over various substrate types, including glass, wood, and metal. The robot has a slim body and is fully posable, making it easy to perform complex movements and balance on any surface.

Flying locomotion
Flying microrobots are miniature robotic systems meticulously engineered to operate in the air by emulating the flight mechanisms of insects and birds. These microrobots have to overcome the issues related to lift, thrust, and movement that are challenging to accomplish at such a small scale where most aerodynamic theories must be modified. Active flight is the most energy-intensive mode of locomotion, as the microrobot must lift its body weight while propelling itself forward. To achieve this function, these microrobots mimic the movement of insect wings and generate the necessary airflow for producing lift and thrust. Miniaturized wings of the robots are actuated with Piezoelectric materials, which offer better control of wing kinematics and flight dynamics.

To calculate the necessary aerodynamic power for maintaining a hover with flapping wings, the primary physical equation is expressed as

$$mg=2*\rho*l^2*\phi*\upsilon_i^2$$

where m is the body mass, L is the wing length, Φ represents the wing flapping amplitude in radians, ρ indicates the air density, and Vi corresponds to the induced air speed surrounding the body, a consequence of the wings' flapping and rotation movements. This equation illustrates that a small insect or robotic device must impart sufficient momentum to the surrounding air to counterbalance its own weight.

One example of a flying microrobot that utilizes flying locomotion is the RoboBee and DelFly Nimble, which, regarding flight dynamics, emulate bees and fruit flies, respectively. Harvard University invented the RoboBee, a miniature robot that mimics a bee fly, takes off and lands like one, and moves around confined spaces. It can be used in self-driving pollination and search operations for missing people and things. The DelFly Nimble, developed by the Delft University of Technology, is one of the most agile micro aerial vehicles that can mimic the maneuverability of a fruit fly by doing different tricks due to its minimal weight and advanced control mechanisms.

Types and applications
Due to their small size, microbots are potentially very cheap, and could be used in large numbers (swarm robotics) to explore environments which are too small or too dangerous for people or larger robots. It is expected that microbots will be useful in applications such as looking for survivors in collapsed buildings after an earthquake or crawling through the digestive tract. What microbots lack in brawn or computational power, they can make up for by using large numbers, as in swarms of microbots.

Potential applications with demonstrated prototypes include:

Medical microbots
For example, there are biocompatible microalgae-based microrobots for active drug-delivery in the lungs and the gastrointestinal tract,  and magnetically guided engineered bacterial microbots for 'precision targeting' for fighting cancer  that all have been tested with mice.

title: Microbotics


text:
User:Ttoom

I am a complete newbie to the Wikipedia, adding an article on Armenian numerals on 17-FEB-2003. I'll be as helpful as I can... Also have done a few fixes to the Armenian Alphabet page. (19 Dec 2003).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Ttoom


text:
Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the literary and graphic components of the work as part of their practice.

Cartoonists may work in a variety of formats, including booklets, comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons, graphic novels, manuals, gag cartoons, storyboards, posters, shirts, books, advertisements, greeting cards, magazines, newspapers, webcomics, and video game packaging.

Terminology
A cartoonist's discipline encompasses both authorial and drafting disciplines (see interdisciplinary arts). The terms "comics illustrator", "comics artist", or "comic book artist" refer to the picture-making portion of the discipline of cartooning (see illustrator). While every "cartoonist" might be considered a "comics illustrator", "comics artist", or a "comic book artist", not every "comics illustrator", "comics artist", or a "comic book artist" is a "cartoonist".

Ambiguity might arise when illustrators and writers share each other's duties in authoring a work.

Editorial cartoons
The English satirist and editorial cartoonist William Hogarth, who emerged in the 18th century, poked fun at contemporary politics and customs; illustrations in such style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". Following the work of Hogarth, editorial/political cartoons began to develop in England in the latter part of the 18th century under the direction of its great exponents, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, both from London. Gillray explored the use of the medium for lampooning and caricature, calling the king (George III), prime ministers and generals to account, and has been referred to as the father of the political cartoon.

Origin in the U.S.
While never a professional cartoonist, Benjamin Franklin is credited with the first cartoon published in The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754: Join, or Die, depicting the American colonies as segments of a snake. In the 19th century, professional cartoonists such as Thomas Nast, whose work appeared in Harper's Weekly, introduced other familiar American political symbols, such as the Republican elephant.

Comic strips
Comic strips received widespread distribution to mainstream newspapers by syndicates.

Calum MacKenzie, in his preface to the exhibition catalog, The Scottish Cartoonists (Glasgow Print Studio Gallery, 1979) defined the selection criteria:
 * The difference between a cartoonist and an illustrator was the same as the difference between a comedian and a comedy actor—the former both deliver their own lines and take full responsibility for them, the latter could always hide behind the fact that it was not his entire creation.

Many strips were the work of two people although only one signature was displayed. Shortly after Frank Willard began Moon Mullins in 1923, he hired Ferd Johnson as his assistant. For decades, Johnson received no credit. Willard and Johnson traveled about Florida, Maine, Los Angeles, and Mexico, drawing the strip while living in hotels, apartments and farmhouses. At its peak of popularity during the 1940s and 1950s, the strip ran in 350 newspapers. According to Johnson, he had been doing the strip solo for at least a decade before Willard's death in 1958: "They put my name on it then. I had been doing it about 10 years before that because Willard had heart attacks and strokes and all that stuff. The minute my name went on that thing and his name went off, 25 papers dropped the strip. That shows you that, although I had been doing it ten years, the name means a lot."

title: Cartoonist


text:
Talk:Cartoonist

First cartoonist
Historically, is there consensus that the first cartoonist (in terms of use of the word) was John Leech? --BozMotalk 11:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Comic strip in caption
Copy the image, blow it up, and you'll see that it's Mark Trail (though whether that's the strip's cartoonist, Ed Dodd, I cannot tell). Interestingly, this PD U.S.-government image comes from the US Fish and Wildlife Service; the character Mark Trail has appeared in a number of children's educational publications by that agency. — Tenebrae 20:18, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

external links...
Is the link to an "example of freelance cartoonist website" really adequate? Is not it just a sort of free advertisement, opening precedent to using wikipedia as if it was a telephonic list, i.e, adding things like "another freelance cartoonist website", "yet another", and links to pharmacies in medicine related articles, etc? I think that if the reader wants to look for a generic freelance cartoonist website or whatever, he can easily use an search engine, without needing a link to a specific site.--Extremophile 23:57, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I removed it, and added a few more links, mainly to other national cartoonist societies, although also one or two resources for scholars too. Hiding Talk 13:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the link to StickDeath.com in the main article is an advertisement. But as am not sure I didn't mess with it. Somebody please do the needful. Kalhans 2nd april 2007

internal links
I added a "See Also" of some relevant pages (Comic book creator, Webcomic, Women in comics). Artemis-Arethusa 15:58, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Merged Comic Strip Creator
There was a request for merging since December 2006, so I merged Comic Strip Creator into this page, adding about 2 paragraphs of information. --Jackson 01:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Manga where?
From a western viewpoint, manga is a form or cartoon (comic) just as anime is a form of animation (from a western viewpoint). But this article doesn't mention manga at all, only mangaka at the "see also" section. I know this article is about the western type of cartoons/comics and their artists, but since japanese comics are indeed comics, they should be mentioned here. They even have the counterpart of the traditional single comic strips (like Garfield) of newspapers: 4koma or "four panel" gag comics (like Lucky Star). --Rev L. Snowfox (talk) 12:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Cartoonist. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.dereksantos.com/comicpage/gold.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100612162153/http://illustrateur.org:80/ to http://illustrateur.org/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 10:30, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Cartoonist. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070701020627/http://editorialcartoonists.com/ to http://editorialcartoonists.com/
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://illustrateur.org/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:50, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Updated Suggested Edits
Leading Section: seems clear and without any missing information. There aren't any sources in the leading section. The third paragraph also includes no source information.

West History: Needs more information added to describe context.

Comics: Needs much more information added to the descriptions.

Creation: Makes claims without sources, seems anecdotal in nature, and sparse.

Types of animation: needs sources

Tools: Needs sources

Tone of entire article is not an informational tone. The sourcing and information give the article a western bias, comprimising neutrality.

The sources are not always reliable, and some are out of orders. Update the links, relies too heavily on blogs, from one area, and lacks variety in the areas of interest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tagropp (talk • contribs) 19:16, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree that there needs to be more references in this article. The sources that are used are questionable in reliability. Most are websites, the one book referenced has a link but you must purchase to check the source. The 2 sections you mentioned Creation and Types of Animation have no sources and the bulk of the history section is lacking citations. The British Museum link is dead and although the lead section mentions many types of cartoonist the article over represents comics and animation with no sections or information on other types of cartoonist. I think this article needs more information on other cartoonist and better sources for the information present. Earth sunshine goddess (talk) 18:53, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Cartoonist suggestions
The page Cartoonist displays sufficient material content in the lead section, the only suggestion I can add to this is that it could be broken into more sentences rather than the really long last sentence with multiple commas. It seems to be balanced well and has the appropriate header style running through it. The article has images that relate to the material in it, and the links work well. The coverage is neutrally based and the reference list looks to be reliable. Overall it seems to be a well written article other than a few long sentences that could be broken down into shorter ones. --Lchollingsworth (talk) 18:33, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

 * TOOLS Topic The 16 essential tools for artists reference link is for a Blog which is not an academic or scholarly source. It could be just a reference for a picture, although the information under Tools doesn't seem to have any source for the information under this topic.Trucksurgeon (talk) 18:56, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Edits to page
Overall the page is very well written, the hyperlinks all work and highlight important mentions throughout the page. The page is well formatted and structured. The only issues are that the "Tools" header should also feature the line under it like the other titles. Also the "In the West" subsection should be followed by information from outside the West to complete the history section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajaniskt (talk • contribs) 20:20, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Fixes Within Page
1) Under History section, there doesn't need to be a "West" subsection because there is no other region involved.

2) Works Cited page should be combined with the Reference Page

3) In the sections "Types of animation" and "Art styles" capitalize the second/third word.

4) Tools needs the heading format

5) Move the further reading either to the article or reference page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.206.191.68 (talk) 20:22, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks
I'm disappointed that no one replied at the time, but these comments are appreciated. I agree that the article is very uneven and inconsistent, and I've started doing some work on it. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 00:22, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Merge Cartoonist and Comics artist
These two articles are essentially the same topic. I've suggested that comics artist be merged into cartoonist, because not all cartoonists draw comics, but all artists who make comics are cartoonists. While some comics artists might bristle at that term (not a fan of it myself), that's the occupational term that's widely used, and the style of the art doesn't make it a different occupation. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 20:59, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Any input on this? These two terms are synonyms, and having two articles taking different angles on the same topic is redundant. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 12:58, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The key may be two different angles, and the differences between the two topics may be enough to keep them seperate. Haven't looked at the two pages closely enough, but both seem to have good material, and the key to a merge is for all the pertinent material to survive. Can this be done here without diluting data? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:40, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Please see this edit that clarifies things up. This editor's addition is backed up by at least one source which I've just added to the relevant section. --Omnipaedista (talk) 16:28, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Uncited material in need of citations
I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 18:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

History
During the 20th century, numerous magazines carried single-panel gag cartoons by such freelance cartoonists as Charles Addams, Irwin Caplan, Chon Day, Clyde Lamb, and John Norment. These were almost always published in black and white, although Collier's often carried cartoons in color. The debut of Playboy introduced full-page color cartoons by Jack Cole, Eldon Dedini, Roy Raymonde and others. Single-panel cartoonists syndicated to newspapers included Dave Breger, Hank Ketcham, George Lichty, Fred Neher, Irving Phillips, and J. R. Williams.

Comic strips
...including the Universal Press Syndicate, United Media, or King Features. Sunday strips go to a coloring company such as American Color before they are published. Some comic strip creators publish in the alternative press or on the Internet. Both vintage and current strips receive reprints in book collections.

Within the comic strip format, it is typical for one creator to produce the whole strip. However, it is also not uncommon for the writing of the strip and the drawing of the art to be carried out by two different people, a writer and an artist (with or without additional assistant artists). In some cases, one artist might draw key figures while another does only backgrounds.

Comic books
Books of cartoons are available in both paperback and hardcover, such as the collections of cartoons from The New Yorker. Prior to the 1960s, cartoons were mostly ignored by museums and art galleries. In 1968, the cartoonist and comedian Roger Price opened the first New York City gallery devoted exclusively to cartoons, mainly work by the leading magazine gag cartoonists. Today, there are several museums devoted to cartoons, notably the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, run by curator Jenny E. Robb at Ohio State University.

With regards to the comic book format, the work can be split in many different ways. The writing and the creation of the art can be split between two people, an example being From Hell, which was written by Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell. The writing of a comic book story can sometimes be shared between two people, with one person writing the plot and another the script.

The artistic work is often subdivided, especially on work produced for the larger comic book publishers, with four people typically working on the art: a penciller, an inker, a colorist, and a letterer. Sometimes this combination of four artists is augmented by a fifth, a breakdown artist. However, this generally occurs only when an artist fails to meet a deadline or when a writer, sometimes referred to as a scripter, produces breakdown art. Breakdown art is where the story has been laid out very roughly in pencils to indicate panel layouts and character positions within panels but with no details. Such roughs are sometimes referred to as "layouts."

The norm of four artists is sometimes reduced to three if the penciller also inks his own work, usually being credited within the book as a penciller/inker. John Byrne and Walt Simonson are artists who have, on occasion, inked their own work.

These roles are highly interchangeable, and many artists can fulfill different roles. Stan Sakai is a highly regarded letterer of comic books who also creates his own series, Usagi Yojimbo. Producing his autobiographical works, Eddie Campbell has created both scripts and art, plus teaming with his daughter on the coloring. On Cerebus, for the majority of the run, Dave Sim created everything except the backgrounds, which were drawn by Gerhard.

Web cartoonist
Many artists have used the web since its inception to publish their works online. This eventually led to the creation of webcomics thanks in part to many titles being able to be read for free and anyone being able to publish them. Many of the artists who create these webcomics are known as web cartoonists due to the fact that the vast majority of webcomics are considered to be online versions of comic-strips and cartoons rather than full-fledged comic books like digital comics. It is hard to pinpoint when the actual term was created but the earliest use was 2001 with the Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards. Some well known web cartoonists include Randall Munroe of xkcd, Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content and Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade.

Creation
Comics artists usually sketch a drawing in pencil before going over the drawing in India ink, using either a dip pen or a brush. Artists may also use a lightbox to create the final image in ink. Some artists, Brian Bolland, for example, use computer graphics, with the published work as the first physical appearance of the artwork. By many definitions (including McCloud's, above), the definition of comics extends to digital media such as webcomics and the mobile comic.

The nature of the comics work being created determines the number of people who work on its creation, with successful comic strips and comic books being produced through a studio system, in which an artist assembles a team of assistants to help create the work. However, works from independent companies, self-publishers, or those of a more personal nature can be produced by a single creator.

Within the comic book industry of North America, the studio system has come to be the main method of creation. Through its use by the industry, the roles have become heavily codified, and the managing of the studio has become the company's responsibility, with an editor discharging the management duties. The editor assembles a number of creators and oversees the work to publication.

Any number of people can assist in the creation of a comic book in this way, from a plotter, a breakdown artist, a penciller, an inker, a scripter, a letterer, and a colorist, with some roles being performed by the same person.

In contrast, a comic strip tends to be the work of a sole creator, usually termed a cartoonist. However, it is not unusual for a cartoonist to employ the studio method, particularly when a strip becomes successful. Mort Walker employed a studio, while Bill Watterson and Charles Schulz did not. Gag, political, and editorial cartoonists tend to work alone as well, though a cartoonist may use assistants.

Tools
When inking, many artists preferred to use a Winsor & Newton Series 7, #3 brush as the main tool, which could be used in conjunction with other brushes, dip pens, a fountain pen, and/or a variety of technical pens or markers. Mechanical tints can be employed to add grey tone to an image. An artist might paint with acrylics, gouache, poster paints, or watercolors. Color can also be achieved through crayons, pastels or colored pencils.

Eraser, rulers, templates, set squares and a T-square assist in creating lines and shapes. A drawing table provides an angled work surface with lamps sometimes attached to the table. A lightbox allows an artist to trace his pencil work when inking, allowing for a looser finish. Knives and scalpels fill a variety of needs, including cutting board or scraping off mistakes. A cutting mat aids paper trimming. Process white is a thick opaque white material for covering mistakes. Adhesives and tapes help composite an image from different sources.

title: Talk:Cartoonist


text:
SBus

SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers (including all SPARCstations) from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s. It was introduced by Sun in 1989 to be a high-speed bus counterpart to their high-speed SPARC processors, replacing the earlier (and by this time, outdated) VMEbus used in their Motorola 68020- and 68030-based systems and early SPARC boxes. When Sun moved to open the SPARC definition in the early 1990s, SBus was likewise standardized and became IEEE-1496. In 1997 Sun started to migrate away from SBus to the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, and today SBus is no longer used.

The industry's first third-party SBus cards were announced in 1989 by Antares Microsystems; these were a 10BASE2 Ethernet controller, a SCSI-SNS host adapter, a parallel port, and an 8-channel serial controller.

The specification was published by Edward H. Frank and James D. Lyle. A technical guide to the bus was published in 1992 in book form by Lyle, who founded Troubador Technologies. Sun also published a set of books as a "developer's kit" to encourage third-party products.

At the peak of the market over 250 manufacturers were listed in the SBus Product Directory, which was renamed to the SPARC Product Directory in 1996.

SBus is in many ways a "clean" design. It was targeted only to be used with SPARC processors, so most cross-platform issues were not a consideration. SBus is based on a big-endian 32-bit address and data bus, can run at speeds ranging from 16.67 MHz to 25 MHz, and is capable of transferring up to 100 MB/s. Devices are each mapped onto a 28-bit address space (256 MB). Only eight masters are supported, although there can be an unlimited number of slaves.

When the 64-bit UltraSPARC was introduced, SBus was modified to support extended transfers of a 64 bits doubleword per cycle to produce a 200 MB/s 64-bit bus. This variant of the SBus architecture used the same form factor and was backward-compatible with existing devices, as extended transfers are an optional feature.

SBus cards had a very compact form factor for the time. A single-width card was 83.82 mm wide by 146.7 mm long and is designed to be mounted parallel to the motherboard. This allowed for three expansion slots in the slim "pizza box" enclosure of the SPARCstation 1. The design also allows for double- or triple-width cards that take up two or three slots, as well as double-height (two 3x5 inch boards mounted in a "sandwich" configuration) cards.

SBus was originally announced as both a system bus and a peripheral interconnect that allowed input and output devices relatively low latency access to memory. However, soon memory and central processing unit (CPU) speeds outpaced I/O performance. Within a year some Sun systems used MBus, another interconnection standard, as a CPU—memory bus. The SBus served as an input/output bus for the rest of its lifetime.

title: SBus


text:
Lignum vitae

Lignum vitae is a wood, also called guayacan or guaiacum, and in parts of Europe known as Pockholz or pokhout, from trees of the genus Guaiacum. The trees are indigenous to the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America (e.g., Colombia and Venezuela) and have been an important export crop to Europe since the beginning of the 16th century. The wood was once very important for applications requiring a material with its extraordinary combination of strength, toughness, and density. It is also the national tree of the Bahamas, and the Jamaican national flower.

The wood is obtained chiefly from Guaiacum officinale and Guaiacum sanctum, both small, slow-growing trees. All species of the genus Guaiacum are now listed in Appendix II of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) as potentially endangered species. G. sanctum is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List. Demand for the wood has been reduced by modern materials science, which has led to polymers, alloys and composite materials that can take lignum vitae's place.

Various other hardwoods may also be called lignum vitae and should not be confused with it. The best-known come from Bulnesia arborea and Bulnesia sarmientoi (in the same subfamily as Guaiacum) and are known as verawood or Argentine lignum vitae; they are somewhat similar in appearance and working qualities as genuine lignum vitae. Note that these species are now Plectrocarpa arborea and Plectrocarpa sarmientoi. Some hardwoods from Australasia (e.g., Vitex lignum-vitae and some species of Acacia and Eucalyptus) are also referred to as lignum vitae.

Name
Lignum vitae is Latin for "wood of life". The plant derives its name from its medicinal uses; lignum vitae resin has been used to treat a variety of medical conditions from coughs to arthritis.

Other names for lignum vitae include palo santo (Spanish for "holy wood"), Aura palo santo and "bastard greenheart" (not to be confused with true greenheart Chlorocardium rodiei, a popular wood in shipbuilding, cabinetry, and woodturning but a completely different timber). Lignum vitae is also one of the numerous hard, dense woods loosely referred to as "ironwood."

Description
The tree is slow-growing and relatively small in stature, even when mature and old. It bears small, purplish-blue flowers which result in paired orange dehiscent fruits. The bark is mottled.

Wood products
Lignum vitae is hard and durable, and is also the densest wood traded (average dried density: ~79 lb/ft3 or ~1,260 kg/m3); it will easily sink in water. On the Janka scale of hardness, which measures hardness of woods, lignum vitae ranks highest of the trade woods, with a Janka hardness of 4,500 lbf (compared with Olneya at 3,260 lbf, African blackwood at 2,940 lbf, hickory at 1,820 lbf, red oak at 1,290 lbf, yellow pine at 690 lbf, and Balsa at 100 lbf). The densest of all woods is Allocasuarina luehmannii. Krugiodendron typically has a higher density, among many other woods that vary by sample.

Uses
Because of the density of the wood, cricket bails, in particular "heavy bails" used in windy conditions, are sometimes made of lignum vitae. It is also sometimes used to make lawn bowls, croquet mallets, and skittles balls. The wood also has seen widespread historical usage in mortars and pestles and for wood carvers' mallets.

It was the traditional wood used for the British police truncheon until recently because of both its density and its strength, combined with its relative softness compared to metal, thereby tending to bruise or stun rather than simply cut the skin.

The belaying pins and deadeyes aboard USS Constitution and many other sailing ships were made from lignum vitae. Due to its density and natural oils, they rarely require replacement, despite the severity of typical marine weathering conditions, and also resisted jamming in their mortise holes. The sheaves of blocks on sailing vessels were made of lignum vitae until the introduction of modern synthetics.

Lignum vitae's toughness allows its use also as a lap in the process of cutting gems. The wood is covered with powdered industrial diamond, attached to a spindle, and used to smooth rough surfaces of gems.

Master clockmaker John Harrison used lignum vitae in the bearings and gears of his pendulum clocks and his first three marine chronometers (all of which were large clocks rather than watches), since the wood is self-lubricating. The use of lignum vitae eliminates the need for horological lubricating oil; 18th-century horological oil would become viscous and reduce the accuracy of a timepiece under unfavourable conditions (including those that prevail at sea).

For the same reason it was widely used in water-lubricated shaft bearings for ships and hydro-electric power plants and in the stern-tube bearings of ship propeller shafts until the 1960s saw the introduction of sealed white metal bearings. According to the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association website, the shaft bearings on the WWII submarine USS Pampanito (SS-383) were made of this wood. The aft main shaft strut bearings for USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, were composed of this wood. Also, the bearings in the original 1920s turbines of the Conowingo hydroelectric plant on the lower Susquehanna River were made from lignum vitae. The shaft bearings on the horizontal turbines at the Pointe du Bois generating station in Manitoba are made from lignum vitae. Other hydroelectric plant turbine bearings, many of them still in service, were fabricated with lignum vitae and are too numerous to be listed here.

The United Railroads of San Francisco (an ancestor of the San Francisco Municipal Railway) began installing insulators made of composite materials to support the heavy 600-volt DC feeder wires for their trolley system in 1904. These lines were damaged, along with most everything else, during the 1906 earthquake and the fires that followed. Rebuilding the trolley system and expanding it to replace cable car routes destroyed in the quake created a huge demand for insulators, a demand manufacturers further east were unable to meet. The properties of lignum vitae, namely its ability to withstand high stress (from heavy cables on long spans and the strain of lines rounding corners) and high temperature (from the feeder cables' becoming very hot during peak operating hours), and its ready availability from the holds of the ships in the harbor (where it served as dunnage and ballast) made it an ideal "temporary" solution. Many were still in use well into the 1970s, and the final few were replaced with underground feeder systems in the 2000s.

It was also used extensively in the manufacture of British Railways Mark 1 Rolling Stock, as a "bump stop" in the bogies (the frame that carries the wheels).

In popular culture
Pioneering calypsonian/vaudevillian Sam Manning recorded a song titled "Lignum Vitae" in the 1920s.

Benvenuto Cellini recounts using lignum vitae, presumably decocted, to cure himself of a venereal disease, the "French Pox", presumably syphilis.

According to T. H. White's version of the Arthurian legend, The Once and Future King, Merlin's wand is made of lignum vitae and has magical powers.

Gabriel García Márquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera includes a bathtub made of this wood in one of the main characters' homes. His novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold also refers to the use of this wood in making a cane for the blind Poncio Vicario.

American folksinger Pete Seeger fashioned the neck of his trademark banjo from lignum vitae.

In Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House, one of the characters, Matthew Bagnet is referred to as lignum vitae, "... in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy."

In Philip Pullman's novel The Secret Commonwealth, the heroine Lyra Belacqua carries a truncheon made from lignum vitae as a weapon.

In Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, lignum vitae logs are a common crafting material for carpenters.

title: Lignum vitae


text:
Philidor

Philidor (Filidor) or Danican Philidor was a family of musicians that served as court musicians to the French kings. The original name of the family was Danican (D'Anican) and was of Scottish origin (Duncan). Philidor was a later addition to the family name, given first to Michel the elder by Louis XIII because his oboe playing reminded the king of an Italian virtuoso oboist named Filidori. Both Michel the younger and Jean played in the Grande Écurie (literally, the Great Stable; figuratively, the Military Band) in Paris. Later members of the family were known as composers as well. One of them (François-André Danican Philidor) was a chess master.

 * Michel Danican Philidor the elder (1580–1651)
 * Michel Danican Philidor the younger (c. 1610–1659) was a renowned oboist and, together with Jean Hotteterre, co-invented the oboe by modifying the shawm so that the bore was narrower and the reed could be held near the end by the player's lips
 * Jean Danican Philidor (c. 1620–1679), the first whose name appears as Danican dit Philidor, father of the next generation
 * André Danican Philidor (André I, "l'aîné") (c. 1652–1730), son of Jean, composer of the Marche française (Marche royale) (1679)
 * François Danican Philidor (c. 1680–1730), son of André l'aîné, half brother of Anne
 * Anne Danican Philidor (1681–1728), son of André, founder of a series of public concerts
 * Michel Danican Philidor III (1683–1723), son of André
 * François-André Danican Philidor (André II) (1726–1795), very late son of André; opera composer (notably Tom Jones), and the strongest chess master in the 18th century. He is considered by many to be one of the strongest players in chess history. His name is renowned among all chess players and there are two important chess terms named for his innovations:
 * the Philidor defence, an opening
 * the Philidor position, an endgame position
 * Jacques Danican Philidor (known as "le cadet", being the younger brother of Philidor the Elder) (1657–1708), son of Jean, composer of the Marche à quatre timbales pour le Carrousel de Monseigneur (1685)
 * Pierre Danican Philidor (1681–1731), son of Jacques le cadet, also a musician

title: Philidor


text: Talk:Indigenous languages of the Americas


text:
Orgy (band)

Orgy is an American industrial rock band formed in 1997, from Los Angeles, California. They have described their music as "death pop". The band is best known for their cover version of the New Order song "Blue Monday", and the song "Stitches", both from their 1998 album Candyass. Then they released their second album, Vapor Transmission, which was released in 2000, with "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)" and "Opticon" as singles.

Early years (1997)
Orgy was formed in 1997 by vocalist Jay Gordon and guitarists Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck. Bassist Paige Haley and drummer Bobby Hewitt soon completed the line-up. Derakh had previously gained some fame in the 1980s metal band Rough Cutt, and Hewitt was a former member of Electric Love Hogs. Gordon played bass in Deadsy due to the lack of a bass player, on their unreleased self-tilted album, splitting roles with his friend and the lead singer, Elijah Blue Allman. He then left Deadsy, to form Orgy. Gordon and Derakh were also experienced producers, having produced Coal Chamber's self-titled album.

In 1997, Jonathan Davis, who performed with Shuck in Sexart, signed Orgy as the first act on Korn's label, Elementree Records, which at the time had distribution with Reprise Records.

Candyass and Vapor Transmission (1998–2001)
In 1998, Orgy released their debut album, Candyass, the name inspired by a drag queen they had met. The album sold almost two million copies and produced two singles: a cover of the New Order song "Blue Monday", and "Stitches". Both charted on Total Request Live. The song "Revival" featured Jonathan Davis.

Orgy made their live debut at EdgeFest, an annual radio show in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1998. They also appeared on the Family Values Tour with Korn, Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube, Incubus, and Rammstein. They were featured on the live compilation album of the tour, released in 1999. Other tours with Love and Rockets and Sugar Ray followed.

Their second album, the science fiction-themed Vapor Transmission, was released in 2000, with "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)" and "Opticon" as singles.

Side work and Punk Statik Paranoia (2001–2005)
In 2001, Orgy released the song "Faces" for the soundtrack of the film Zoolander. The band was a musical guest in the television series Charmed, performing "Opticon" in the episode "Sin Francisco".

In late 2003, guitarists Shuck and Derakh formed a side project, Julien-K, as an outlet for electronic material they had come up with during the writing process for Orgy. Jay Gordon also remixed the Linkin Park track "Points of Authority" for their album Reanimation, where it was renamed "Pts.of.Athrty".

After touring in support of Vapor Transmission, Orgy began working on a new album and a live DVD in mid to late 2002, but both of these were pushed back to mid 2003. Eventually, the band left Reprise Records and Elementree, taking the band's already recorded material with them. Explaining the split from the label in an interview to PopGurls.com:"'We just couldn't get it together with them to get the record going and they weren't dropping us. So we finally managed to get let out of our contract and got the stuff that we had already recorded.' -Amir Derakh"in 2003, Jay Gordon and his father, Lou, started his own independent record label, D1 Music, and the label finally released the band's third album, Punk Statik Paranoia, in February 2004. The long-awaited live DVD, Trans Global Spectacle, was released in August 2005.

Following touring in support of Punk Statik Paranoia, the band went on hiatus in late 2005.

Hiatus (2005–2012)
When asked for an Orgy update in late July 2008, Shuck informed fans that Orgy's return is still underway but their priority is getting the much delayed Julien-K album released. During a video interview at the NAMM Show in 2009, Derakh mentioned a 2010 Orgy reunion.

Shuck and Derakh released their first album as Julien-K, titled Death to Analog, in March 2009. In the same year, they also released an album with Chester Bennington of Linkin Park under the name Dead by Sunrise.

On October 25, 2010, Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh stated on the Julien-K blog: "As of Oct. 26th we will no longer be part of Orgy. Jay will continue making music without the original members."

On October 30, 2010, Jay Gordon released a statement via his official Facebook profile stating that he still owns the Orgy name and wants to continue forth creating new material for the band. Gordon wrote that all previous members of the band were too busy with numerous side projects to continue with the original band. "Everyone has been so busy with their different projects I figured this was the only way for me to continue on with the name. I started this band, and I don't want to let it fall to the wayside completely."

On November 7, 2011, Blabbermouth.net published a news story detailing the bitter feud between Gordon and guitarists Shuck and Derakh, that had spiraled out of control after Gordon revealed his plans to assemble a band of musicians and begin touring under the name Orgy.

Return with new lineup (2012–present)
On February 3, 2012, it was announced that Orgy would embark on a five-week run titled the Bad Blood Tour. Gordon was the only original member of Orgy appearing on this tour.

On August 4, 2012, Orgy linked to a 30-second demo of a new song, "Grime of the Century", via their Twitter and Facebook page. The song "Grime of the Century" was later made available on iTunes and the new Orgy website.

In 2013, Orgy embarked on the Wide Awake and Dead Tour with Vampires Everywhere! and Davey Suicide.

Orgy launched a crowdfunding campaign in August 2013 via Indiegogo.com with a $100,000 goal. Two months later, at the conclusion of the campaign, the band had only raised $8,739, falling 92% short of their goal.

On February 23, 2014, the band announced through their official website that the new single "Wide Awake and Dead" will be available through iTunes and Amazon on March 18, 2014. The "Wide Awake and Dead" video was filmed on April 22.

In 2015, they released their first collection of new music in 11 years, an EP titled Talk Sick. Originally, it was to be followed with another EP titled Entropy, but Gordon later told Westword Magazine the band would instead release it as a full-length album, that has yet to materialize.

The band performed at the 2023 edition of the Sick New World festival; their appearance drew criticism as the band appeared to heavily use playback instead of a live performance.

Musical style
The band's sound has been described as alternative metal, nu metal, industrial rock, industrial metal, electronic rock, gothic rock, hard rock, and glam metal.

Band members
Current members
 * Jay Gordon – lead vocals (1997–2005, 2010–present)
 * Nic Speck – bass, backing vocals (2010–present)
 * Carlton Bost – lead guitar, backing vocals (2011–present)
 * Márton Veress – drums (2019–present)
 * Ilia Yordanov – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2022–present)

Former members
 * Ryan Shuck – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1997–2005, 2010)
 * Amir Derakh – lead guitar, synthesizer (1997–2005, 2010)
 * Bobby Hewitt – drums (1997–2005)
 * Paige Haley – bass (1997–2005)
 * Ashburn Miller – rhythm guitar, synthesizer, keyboards (2011–2013)
 * Jamie Miller – drums (2010–2013)
 * Bobby Amaro – drums (2013–2019)
 * Creighton Emrick – rhythm guitar (2013–2022)

Former touring musicians
 * Raanen Bozzio – drums (2018)
 * Ryan Browne – drums (2018)

Related projects

 * Julien-K – an electronic rock group founded by Derakh and Shuck in 2003. Their album Death to Analog was released on March 10, 2009.
 * Dead by Sunrise – a band founded by Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, Amir Derakh, and Ryan Shuck
 * Hellflower – a band founded by a longtime friend and Director of Activities Church, including Haley
 * kill-o-watt – Gordon's dubstep side project

Singles
Promotional singles

title: Orgy (band)


text:
PIC microcontrollers

PIC (usually pronounced as /pɪk/) is a family of microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1640 originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics Division. The name PIC initially referred to Peripheral Interface Controller, and is currently expanded as Programmable Intelligent Computer. The first parts of the family were available in 1976; by 2013 the company had shipped more than twelve billion individual parts, used in a wide variety of embedded systems.

The PIC was originally intended to be used with the General Instrument CP1600, the first commercially available single-chip 16-bit microprocessor. The CP1600 had a complex bus that made it difficult to interface with, and the PIC was introduced as a companion device offering ROM for program storage, RAM for temporary data handling, and a simple CPU for controlling the transfers. While this offered considerable power, GI's marketing was limited and the CP1600 was not a success. When the company spun off their chip division to form Microchip in 1985, sales of the CP1600 were all but dead. By this time, the PIC had formed a major market of its own, and it became one of the new company's primary products.

Early models only had mask ROM for code storage, but with its spinoff it was soon upgraded to use EPROM and then EEPROM, which made it possible for end-users to program the devices in their own facilities. All current models use flash memory for program storage, and newer models allow the PIC to reprogram itself. Since then the line has seen significant change; memory is now available in 8-bit, 16-bit, and, in latest models, 32-bit wide. Program instructions vary in bit-count by family of PIC, and may be 12, 14, 16, or 24 bits long. The instruction set also varies by model, with more powerful chips adding instructions for digital signal processing functions. The hardware implementations of PIC devices range from 6-pin SMD, 8-pin DIP chips up to 144-pin SMD chips, with discrete I/O pins, ADC and DAC modules, and communications ports such as UART, I2C, CAN, and even USB. Low-power and high-speed variations exist for many types.

The manufacturer supplies computer software for development known as MPLAB X, assemblers and C/C++ compilers, and programmer/debugger hardware under the MPLAB and PICKit series. Third party and some open-source tools are also available. Some parts have in-circuit programming capability; low-cost development programmers are available as well as high-volume production programmers.

PIC devices are popular with both industrial developers and hobbyists due to their low cost, wide availability, large user base, an extensive collection of application notes, availability of low cost or free development tools, serial programming, and re-programmable flash-memory capability.

Original concept
The original PIC was intended to be used with General Instrument's new CP1600 16-bit central processing unit (CPU). In order to fit 16-bit data and address buses into a then-standard 40-pin dual inline package (DIP) chip, the two buses shared the same set of 16 connection pins. In order to communicate with the CPU, devices had to watch other pins on the CPU to determine if the information on the bus was an address or data. Since only one of these was being presented at a time, the devices had to watch the bus to go into address mode, see if that address was part of its memory mapped input/output range, "latch" that address and then wait for the data mode to turn on and then read the value. Additionally, the 1600 used several external pins to select which device it was attempting to talk to, further complicating the interfacing.

As interfacing devices to the 1600 could be complex, GI also released a series of support chips with all of the required circuitry built-in. These included keyboard drivers, cassette deck interfaces for storage, and a host of similar systems. For more complex systems, GI introduced the 8-bit PIC in 1975. The idea was that a device would use the PIC to handle all the interfacing with the host computer's CP1600, but also use its own internal processor to handle the actual device it was connected to. For instance, a floppy disk drive could be implemented with a PIC talking to the CPU on one side and the floppy disk controller on the other. In keeping with this idea, what would today be known as a microcontroller, the PIC included a small amount of read-only memory (ROM) that would be written with the user's device controller code, and a separate random access memory (RAM) for buffering and working with data. These were connected separately, making the PIC a Harvard architecture system with code and data being managed on separate internal pathways.

In theory, the combination of 1600 CPU and PIC device controllers provided a very high-performance device control system, one that was similar in power and performance to the channel controllers seen on mainframe computers. In the floppy controller example, for instance, a single PIC could control the drive, provide a reasonable amount of buffering to improve performance, and then transfer data to and from the host computer using direct memory access (DMA) or through relatively simple code in the CPU. The downside to this approach was cost; while the PIC was not necessary for low-speed devices like a keyboard, many tasks would require one or more PICs to build out a complete system.

While the design concept had a number of attractive features, General Instrument never strongly marketed the 1600, preferring to deal only with large customers and ignoring the low-end market. This resulted in very little uptake of the system, with the Intellivision being the only really widespread use with about three million units. When GI spun off its chip division to form Microchip Technology in 1985, production of the CP1600 ended. By this time, however, the PIC had developed a large market of customers using it for a wide variety of roles, and the PIC went on to become one of the new company's primary products.

After the 1600
In 1985, General Instrument sold their microelectronics division and the new owners cancelled almost everything which by this time was mostly out-of-date. The PIC, however, was upgraded with an internal EPROM to produce a programmable channel controller. At the same time Plessey in the UK released NMOS processors numbered PIC1650 and PIC1655 based on the GI design, using the same instruction sets, either user mask programmable or versions pre-programmed for auto-diallers and keyboard interfaces.

In 1998 Microchip introduced the PIC 16F84, a flash programmable and erasable version of its successful serial programmable PIC16C84. In 2001, Microchip introduced more flash programmable devices, with full production commencing in 2002.

Today, a huge variety of PICs are available with various on-board peripherals (serial communication modules, UARTs, motor control kernels, etc.) and program memory from 256 words to 64K words and more (a "word" is one assembly language instruction, varying in length from 8 to 16 bits, depending on the specific PIC micro family).

PIC and PICmicro are now registered trademarks of Microchip Technology. It is generally thought that PIC stands for Peripheral Interface Controller, although General Instruments' original acronym for the initial PIC1640 and PIC1650 devices was "Programmable Interface Controller". The acronym was quickly replaced with "Programmable Intelligent Computer".

The Microchip 16C84 (PIC16x84), introduced in 1993, was the first Microchip CPU with on-chip EEPROM memory.

By 2013, Microchip was shipping over one billion PIC microcontrollers every year.

Device families
PIC micro chips are designed with a Harvard architecture, and are offered in various device families. The baseline and mid-range families use 8-bit wide data memory, and the high-end families use 16-bit data memory. The latest series, PIC32MZ, is a 32-bit MIPS-based microcontroller. Instruction word sizes are 12 bits (PIC10 and PIC12), 14 bits (PIC16) and 24 bits (PIC24 and dsPIC). The binary representations of the machine instructions vary by family and are shown in PIC instruction listings.

Within these families, devices may be designated PICnnCxxx (CMOS) or PICnnFxxx (Flash). "C" devices are generally classified as "Not suitable for new development" (not actively promoted by Microchip). The program memory of "C" devices is variously described as OTP, ROM, or EEPROM. As of October 2016, the only OTP product classified as "In production" is the pic16HV540. "C" devices with quartz windows (for UV erasure) are in general no longer available.

PIC10 and PIC12
These devices feature a 12-bit wide code memory, a 32-byte register file, and a tiny two level deep call stack. They are represented by the PIC10 series, as well as by some PIC12 and PIC16 devices. Baseline devices are available in 6-pin to 40-pin packages.

Generally the first 7 to 9 bytes of the register file are special-purpose registers, and the remaining bytes are general purpose RAM. Pointers are implemented using a register pair: after writing an address to the FSR (file select register), the INDF (indirect f) register becomes an alias for the addressed register. If banked RAM is implemented, the bank number is selected by the high 3 bits of the FSR. This affects register numbers 16–31; registers 0–15 are global and not affected by the bank select bits.

Because of the very limited register space (5 bits), 4 rarely read registers were not assigned addresses, but written by special instructions ( and  ).

The ROM address space is 512 and may only specify addresses in the first half of each 512-word page. That is, the CALL instruction specifies the low 9 bits of the address, but only the low 8 bits of that address are a parameter of the instruction, while the 9th bit (bit 8) is implicitly specified as 0 by the CALL instruction itself.

Lookup tables are implemented using a computed  (assignment to PCL register) into a table of   instructions. RETLW returns returning in the W register an 8-bit immediate constant that is encoded into the instruction.

This "baseline core" does not support interrupts; all I/O must be polled. There are some "enhanced baseline" variants with interrupt support and a four-level call stack.

PIC10F32x devices feature a mid-range 14-bit wide code memory of 256 or 512 words, a 64-byte SRAM register file, and an 8-level deep hardware stack. These devices are available in 6-pin SMD and 8-pin DIP packages (with two pins unused). One input only and three I/O pins are available. A complex set of interrupts are available. Clocks are an internal calibrated high-frequency oscillator of 16 MHz with a choice of selectable speeds via software and a 31 kHz low-power source.

PIC16
These devices feature a 14-bit wide code memory, and an improved 8-level deep call stack. The instruction set differs very little from the baseline devices, but the two additional opcode bits allow 128 registers and 2048 words of code to be directly addressed. There are a few additional miscellaneous instructions, and two additional 8-bit literal instructions, add and subtract. The mid-range core is available in the majority of devices labeled PIC12 and PIC16.

The first 32 bytes of the register space are allocated to special-purpose registers; the remaining 96 bytes are used for general-purpose RAM. If banked RAM is used, the high 16 registers (0x70–0x7F) are global, as are a few of the most important special-purpose registers, including the STATUS register, which holds the RAM bank select bits. (The other global registers are FSR and INDF, the low 8 bits of the program counter PCL, the PC high preload register PCLATH, and the master interrupt control register INTCON.)

The PCLATH register supplies high-order instruction address bits when the 8 bits supplied by a write to the PCL register, or the 11 bits supplied by a  or   instruction, are not sufficient to address the available ROM space.

PIC17
The PIC17 series never became popular and has been superseded by the PIC18 architecture (however, see clones below). The PIC17 series is not recommended for new designs, and availability may be limited to users.

Improvements over earlier cores are 16-bit wide opcodes (allowing many new instructions), and a 16-level deep call stack. PIC17 devices were produced in packages from 40 to 68 pins.

The PIC17 series introduced a number of important new features:

 * a memory mapped accumulator
 * read access to code memory (table reads)
 * direct register-to-register moves (prior cores needed to move registers through the accumulator)
 * an external program memory interface to expand the code space
 * an 8-bit × 8-bit hardware multiplier
 * a second indirect register pair
 * auto-increment/auto-decrement addressing controlled by control bits in a status register (ALUSTA)

A significant limitation was that RAM space was limited to 256 bytes (26 bytes of special function registers, and 232 bytes of general-purpose RAM), with awkward bank-switching in the models that supported more.

PIC18
In 2000, Microchip introduced the PIC18 architecture. Unlike the PIC17 series, it has proven to be very popular, with a large number of device variants presently in manufacture. In contrast to earlier devices, which were more often than not programmed in assembly language, C has become the predominant development language.

The PIC18 series inherits most of the features and instructions of the PIC17 series, while adding a number of important new features:

 * call stack is 21 bits wide and much deeper (31 levels deep)
 * the call stack may be read and written (TOSU:TOSH:TOSL registers)
 * conditional branch instructions
 * indexed addressing mode (PLUSW)
 * the FSR registers are extended to 12 bits, allowing them to linearly address the entire data address space
 * the addition of another FSR register (bringing the number up to 3)

The RAM space is 12 bits, addressed using a 4-bit bank select register (BSR) and an 8-bit offset in each instruction. An additional "access" bit in each instruction selects between bank 0 (a=0) and the bank selected by the BSR (a=1).

A 1-level stack is also available for the STATUS, WREG and BSR registers. They are saved on every interrupt, and may be restored on return. If interrupts are disabled, they may also be used on subroutine call/return by setting the s bit (appending ", FAST" to the instruction).

The auto increment/decrement feature was improved by removing the control bits and adding four new indirect registers per FSR. Depending on which indirect file register is being accessed, it is possible to postdecrement, postincrement, or preincrement FSR; or form the effective address by adding W to FSR.

In more advanced PIC18 devices, an "extended mode" is available which makes the addressing even more favorable to compiled code:

 * a new offset addressing mode; some addresses which were relative to the access bank are now interpreted relative to the FSR2 register
 * the addition of several new instructions, notably for manipulating the FSR registers.

PIC18 devices are still developed (2021) and fitted with CIP (Core Independent Peripherals)

PIC24 and dsPIC
In 2001, Microchip introduced the dsPIC series of chips, which entered mass production in late 2004. They are Microchip's first inherently 16-bit microcontrollers. PIC24 devices are designed as general purpose microcontrollers. dsPIC devices include digital signal processing capabilities in addition.

Although still similar to earlier PIC architectures, there are significant enhancements:

(But operations on f operands always reference W0.)
 * All registers are 16 bits wide
 * Program counter is 22 bits (bits 22:1; bit 0 is always 0)
 * Instructions are 24 bits wide
 * Data address space expanded to 64 KiB
 * First 2 KiB is reserved for peripheral control registers
 * Data bank switching is not required unless RAM exceeds 62 KiB
 * "f operand" direct addressing extended to 13 bits (8 KiB)
 * 16 W registers available for register-register operations.
 * Instructions come in byte and (16-bit) word forms
 * Stack is in RAM (with W15 as stack pointer); there is no hardware stack
 * W14 is the frame pointer
 * Data stored in ROM may be accessed directly ("Program Space Visibility")
 * Vectored interrupts for different interrupt sources

Some features are:

 * (16×16)-bit single-cycle multiplication and other digital signal processing operations
 * hardware multiply–accumulate (MAC)
 * hardware divide assist (19 cycles for 32/16-bit divide)
 * barrel shifting - for both accumulators and general purpose registers
 * bit reversal
 * hardware support for loop indexing
 * peripheral direct memory access

dsPICs can be programmed in C using Microchip's XC16 compiler (formerly called C30), which is a variant of GCC.

Instruction ROM is 24 bits wide. Software can access ROM in 16-bit words, where even words hold the least significant 16 bits of each instruction, and odd words hold the most significant 8 bits. The high half of odd words reads as zero. The program counter is 23 bits wide, but the least significant bit is always 0, so there are 22 modifiable bits.

Instructions come in two main varieties, with most important operations (add, xor, shifts, etc.) allowing both forms:

 * The first is like the classic PIC instructions, with an operation between a specified f register (i.e. the first 8K of RAM) and a single accumulator W0, with a destination select bit selecting which is updated with the result. (The W registers are memory-mapped. so the f operand may be any W register.)
 * The second form is more conventional, allowing three operands, which may be any of 16 W registers. The destination and one of the sources also support addressing modes, allowing the operand to be in memory pointed to by a W register.

PIC32MX
In November 2007, Microchip introduced the PIC32MX family of 32-bit microcontrollers, based on the MIPS32 M4K Core. The device can be programmed using the Microchip MPLAB C Compiler for PIC32 MCUs, a variant of the GCC compiler. The first 18 models currently in production (PIC32MX3xx and PIC32MX4xx) are pin to pin compatible and share the same peripherals set with the PIC24FxxGA0xx family of (16-bit) devices, allowing the use of common libraries, software and hardware tools. Today, starting at 28 pin in small QFN packages up to high performance devices with Ethernet, CAN and USB OTG, full family range of mid-range 32-bit microcontrollers are available.

The PIC32 architecture brought a number of new features to Microchip portfolio, including:

 * The highest execution speed 80 MIPS (120+ Dhrystone MIPS @ 80 MHz)
 * The largest flash memory: 512 kB
 * One instruction per clock cycle execution
 * The first cached processor
 * Allows execution from RAM
 * Full Speed Host/Dual Role and OTG USB capabilities
 * Full JTAG and 2-wire programming and debugging
 * Real-time trace

PIC32MZ
In November 2013, Microchip introduced the PIC32MZ series of microcontrollers, based on the MIPS M14K core. The PIC32MZ series include:

 * 252 MHz core speed, 415 DMIPS
 * Up to 2 MB Flash and 512KB RAM
 * New peripherals including high-speed USB, crypto engine and SQI

In 2015, Microchip released the PIC32MZ EF family, using the updated MIPS M5150 Warrior M-class processor.

In 2017, Microchip introduced the PIC32MZ DA Family, featuring an integrated graphics controller, graphics processor and 32MB of DDR2 DRAM.

PIC32MM
In June 2016, Microchip introduced the PIC32MM family, specialized for low-power and low-cost applications. The PIC32MM features core-independent peripherals, sleep modes down to 500 nA, and 4 x 4 mm packages. The PIC32MM microcontrollers use the MIPS Technologies M4K, a 32-bit MIPS32 processor. They are meant for very low power consumption and limited to 25 MHz. Their key advantage is to support the 16-bit instructions of MIPS, making program size much more compact (about 40%)

PIC32MK
Microchip introduced the PIC32MK family in 2017, specialized for motor control, industrial control, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and multi-channel CAN applications.

Core architecture
The PIC architecture is characterized by its multiple attributes:

 * Separate code and data spaces (Harvard architecture).
 * Except PIC32: The MIPS M4K architecture's separate data and instruction paths are effectively merged into a single common address space by the System Bus Matrix module.
 * A small number of fixed-length instructions
 * Most instructions are single-cycle (2 clock cycles, or 4 clock cycles in 8-bit models), with one delay cycle on branches and skips
 * One accumulator (W0), the use of which (as source operand) is implied (i.e. is not encoded in the opcode)
 * All RAM locations function as registers as both source and/or destination of math and other functions.
 * A hardware stack for storing return addresses
 * A small amount of addressable data space (32, 128, or 256 bytes, depending on the family), extended through banking
 * Data-space mapped CPU, port, and peripheral registers
 * ALU status flags are mapped into the data space
 * The program counter is also mapped into the data space and writable (this is used to implement indirect jumps).

There is no distinction between memory space and register space because the RAM serves the job of both memory and registers, and the RAM is usually just referred to as the register file or simply as the registers.

Data space (RAM)
PICs have a set of registers that function as general-purpose RAM. Special-purpose control registers for on-chip hardware resources are also mapped into the data space. The addressability of memory varies depending on device series, and all PIC device types have some banking mechanism to extend addressing to additional memory (but some device models have only one bank implemented). Later series of devices feature move instructions, which can cover the whole addressable space, independent of the selected bank. In earlier devices, any register move must be achieved through the accumulator.

To implement indirect addressing, a "file select register" (FSR) and "indirect register" (INDF) are used. A register number is written to the FSR, after which reads from or writes to INDF will actually be from or to the register pointed to by FSR. Later devices extended this concept with post- and pre- increment/decrement for greater efficiency in accessing sequentially stored data. This also allows FSR to be treated almost like a stack pointer (SP).

External data memory is not directly addressable except in some PIC18 devices with high pin count. However, general I/O ports can be used to implement a parallel bus or a serial interface for accessing external memory and other peripherals (using subroutines), with the caveat that such programmed memory access is (of course) much slower than access to the native memory of the PIC MCU.

Code space
The code space is generally implemented as on-chip ROM, EPROM or flash ROM. In general, there is no provision for storing code in external memory due to the lack of an external memory interface. The exceptions are PIC17 and select high pin count PIC18 devices.

Word size
All PICs handle (and address) data in 8-bit chunks. However, the unit of addressability of the code space is not generally the same as the data space. For example, PICs in the baseline (PIC12) and mid-range (PIC16) families have program memory addressable in the same wordsize as the instruction width, i.e. 12 or 14 bits respectively. In contrast, in the PIC18 series, the program memory is addressed in 8-bit increments (bytes), which differs from the instruction width of 16 bits.

In order to be clear, the program memory capacity is usually stated in number of (single-word) instructions, rather than in bytes.

Stacks
PICs have a hardware call stack, which is used to save return addresses. The hardware stack is not software-accessible on earlier devices, but this changed with the PIC18 series devices.

Hardware support for a general-purpose parameter stack was lacking in early series, but this greatly improved in the PIC18 series, making the PIC18 series architecture more friendly to high-level language compilers.

Instruction set
PIC instruction sets vary from about 35 instructions for the low-end PICs to over 80 instructions for the high-end PICs. The instruction set includes instructions to perform a variety of operations on registers directly, on the accumulator and a literal constant, or on the accumulator and a register, as well as for conditional execution, and program branching.

Some operations, such as bit setting and testing, can be performed on any numbered register, but bi-operand arithmetic operations always involve W (the accumulator), writing the result back to either W or the other operand register. To load a constant, it is necessary to load it into W before it can be moved into another register. On the older cores, all register moves needed to pass through W, but this changed on the "high-end" cores.

PIC cores have skip instructions, which are used for conditional execution and branching. The skip instructions are "skip if bit set" and "skip if bit not set". Because cores before PIC18 had only unconditional branch instructions, conditional jumps are implemented by a conditional skip (with the opposite condition) followed by an unconditional branch. Skips are also of utility for conditional execution of any immediate single following instruction. It is possible to skip skip instructions. For example, the instruction sequence "skip if A; skip if B; C" will execute C if A is true or if B is false.

The PIC18 series implemented shadow registers: these are registers which save several important registers during an interrupt, providing hardware support for automatically saving processor state when servicing interrupts.

In general, PIC instructions fall into five classes:

 * Operation on working register (WREG) with 8-bit immediate ("literal") operand. E.g.   (move literal to WREG),   (AND literal with WREG).  One instruction peculiar to the PIC is , load immediate into WREG and return, which is used with computed branches to produce lookup tables.
 * Operation with WREG and indexed register. The result can be written to either the working register (e.g.  ). or the selected register (e.g.  ).
 * Bit operations. These take a register number and a bit number, and perform one of 4 actions: set or clear a bit, and test and skip on set/clear.  The latter are used to perform conditional branches.  The usual ALU status flags are available in a numbered register so operations such as "branch on carry clear" are possible.
 * Control transfers. Other than the skip instructions previously mentioned, there are only two:   and.
 * A few miscellaneous zero-operand instructions, such as return from subroutine, and  to enter low-power mode.

Performance
The architectural decisions are directed at the maximization of speed-to-cost ratio. The PIC architecture was among the first scalar CPU designs and is still among the simplest and cheapest. The Harvard architecture, in which instructions and data come from separate sources, simplifies timing and microcircuit design greatly, and this benefits clock speed, price, and power consumption.

The PIC instruction set is suited to implementation of fast lookup tables in the program space. Such lookups take one instruction and two instruction cycles. Many functions can be modeled in this way. Optimization is facilitated by the relatively large program space of the PIC (e.g. 4096 × 14-bit words on the 16F690) and by the design of the instruction set, which allows embedded constants. For example, a branch instruction's target may be indexed by W, and execute a "RETLW", which does as it is named – return with literal in W.

Interrupt latency is constant at three instruction cycles. External interrupts have to be synchronized with the four-clock instruction cycle, otherwise there can be a one instruction cycle jitter. Internal interrupts are already synchronized. The constant interrupt latency allows PICs to achieve interrupt-driven low-jitter timing sequences. An example of this is a video sync pulse generator. This is no longer true in the newest PIC models, because they have a synchronous interrupt latency of three or four cycles.

Advantages

 * Small instruction set to learn
 * RISC architecture
 * Built-in oscillator with selectable speeds
 * Easy entry level, in-circuit programming plus in-circuit debugging PICkit units available for less than $50
 * Inexpensive microcontrollers
 * Wide range of interfaces including I²C, SPI, USB, UART, A/D, programmable comparators, PWM, LIN, CAN, PSP, and Ethernet
 * Availability of processors in DIL package makes them easy to handle for hobby use.

Limitations

 * One accumulator
 * Register-bank switching is required to access the entire RAM of many devices
 * Operations and registers are not orthogonal; some instructions can address RAM and/or immediate constants, while others can use the accumulator only.

The following stack limitations have been addressed in the PIC18 series, but still apply to earlier cores:

 * The hardware call stack is not addressable, so preemptive task switching cannot be implemented
 * Software-implemented stacks are not efficient, so it is difficult to generate reentrant code and support local variables

With paged program memory, there are two page sizes to worry about: one for CALL and GOTO and another for computed GOTO (typically used for table lookups). For example, on PIC16, CALL and GOTO have 11 bits of addressing, so the page size is 2048 instruction words. For computed GOTOs, where you add to PCL, the page size is 256 instruction words. In both cases, the upper address bits are provided by the PCLATH register. This register must be changed every time control transfers between pages. PCLATH must also be preserved by any interrupt handler.

Compiler development
While several commercial compilers are available, in 2008, Microchip released their own C compilers, C18 and C30, for the line of 18F 24F and 30/33F processors.

As of 2013, Microchip offers their XC series of compilers, for use with MPLAB X. Microchip will eventually phase out its older compilers, such as C18, and recommends using their XC series compilers for new designs.

The RISC instruction set of the PIC assembly language code can make the overall flow difficult to comprehend. Judicious use of simple macros can increase the readability of PIC assembly language. For example, the original Parallax PIC assembler ("SPASM") has macros, which hide W and make the PIC look like a two-address machine. It has macro instructions like  (move the data from address a to address b) and   (add data from address a to data in address b). It also hides the skip instructions by providing three-operand branch macro instructions, such as  (compare a with b and jump to dest if they are not equal).

Hardware features
PIC devices generally feature:

 * Flash memory (program memory, programmed using MPLAB devices)
 * SRAM (data memory)
 * EEPROM (programmable at run-time)
 * Sleep mode (power savings)
 * Watchdog timer
 * Various crystal or RC oscillator configurations, or an external clock

Variants
Within a series, there are still many device variants depending on what hardware resources the chip features:

 * General purpose I/O pins
 * Internal clock oscillators
 * 8/16/32 bit timers
 * Synchronous/Asynchronous Serial Interface USART
 * MSSP Peripheral for I²C and SPI communications
 * Capture/Compare and PWM modules
 * Analog-to-digital converters (up to ~1.0 Msps)
 * USB, Ethernet, CAN interfacing support
 * External memory interface
 * Integrated analog RF front ends (PIC16F639, and rfPIC).
 * KEELOQ Rolling code encryption peripheral (encode/decode)
 * And many more

Trends
The first generation of PICs with EPROM storage have been almost completely replaced by chips with flash memory. Likewise, the original 12-bit instruction set of the PIC1650 and its direct descendants has been superseded by 14-bit and 16-bit instruction sets. Microchip still sells OTP (one-time-programmable) and windowed (UV-erasable) versions of some of its EPROM based PICs for legacy support or volume orders. The Microchip website lists PICs that are not electrically erasable as OTP. UV erasable windowed versions of these chips can be ordered.

Part number
The F in a PICMicro part number generally indicates the PICmicro uses flash memory and can be erased electronically. Conversely, a C generally means it can only be erased by exposing the die to ultraviolet light (which is only possible if a windowed package style is used). An exception to this rule is the PIC16C84, which uses EEPROM and is therefore electrically erasable.

An L in the name indicates the part will run at a lower voltage, often with frequency limits imposed. Parts designed specifically for low voltage operation, within a strict range of 3 – 3.6 volts, are marked with a J in the part number. These parts are also uniquely I/O tolerant as they will accept up to 5 V as inputs.

Development tools
Microchip provides a freeware IDE package called MPLAB X, which includes an assembler, linker, software simulator, and debugger. They also sell C compilers for the PIC10, PIC12, PIC16, PIC18, PIC24, PIC32 and dsPIC, which integrate cleanly with MPLAB X. Free versions of the C compilers are also available with all features. But for the free versions, optimizations will be disabled after 60 days.

Several third parties develop C language compilers for PICs, many of which integrate to MPLAB and/or feature their own IDE. A fully featured compiler for the PICBASIC language to program PIC microcontrollers is available from meLabs, Inc. Mikroelektronika offers PIC compilers in C, BASIC and Pascal programming languages.

A graphical programming language, Flowcode, exists capable of programming 8- and 16-bit PIC devices and generating PIC-compatible C code. It exists in numerous versions from a free demonstration to a more complete professional edition.

The Proteus Design Suite is able to simulate many of the popular 8 and 16-bit PIC devices along with other circuitry that is connected to the PIC on the schematic. The program to be simulated can be developed within Proteus itself, MPLAB or any other development tool.

Device programmers
Devices called "programmers" are traditionally used to get program code into the target PIC. Most PICs that Microchip currently sells feature ICSP (in-circuit serial programming) and/or LVP (low-voltage programming) capabilities, allowing the PIC to be programmed while it is sitting in the target circuit.

Microchip offers programmers/debuggers under the MPLAB and PICKit series. MPLAB ICD4 and MPLAB REAL ICE are the current programmers and debuggers for professional engineering, while PICKit 3 is a low-cost programmer / debugger line for hobbyists and students.

Bootloading
Many of the higher end flash based PICs can also self-program (write to their own program memory), a process known as bootloading. Demo boards are available with a small factory-programmed bootloader that can be used to load user programs over an interface such as RS-232 or USB, thus obviating the need for a programmer device.

Alternatively there is bootloader firmware available that the user can load onto the PIC using ICSP. After programming the bootloader onto the PIC, the user can then reprogram the device using RS232 or USB, in conjunction with specialized computer software.

The advantages of a bootloader over ICSP is faster programming speeds, immediate program execution following programming, and the ability to both debug and program using the same cable.

Third party
There are many programmers for PIC microcontrollers, ranging from the extremely simple designs which rely on ICSP to allow direct download of code from a host computer, to intelligent programmers that can verify the device at several supply voltages. Many of these complex programmers use a pre-programmed PIC themselves to send the programming commands to the PIC that is to be programmed. The intelligent type of programmer is needed to program earlier PIC models (mostly EPROM type) which do not support in-circuit programming.

Third party programmers range from plans to build your own, to self-assembly kits and fully tested ready-to-go units. Some are simple designs which require a PC to do the low-level programming signalling (these typically connect to the serial or parallel port and consist of a few simple components), while others have the programming logic built into them (these typically use a serial or USB connection, are usually faster, and are often built using PICs themselves for control).

In-circuit debugging
All newer PIC devices feature an ICD (in-circuit debugging) interface, built into the CPU core, that allows for interactive debugging of the program in conjunction with MPLAB IDE. MPLAB ICD and MPLAB REAL ICE debuggers can communicate with this interface using the ICSP interface.

This debugging system comes at a price however, namely limited breakpoint count (1 on older devices, 3 on newer devices), loss of some I/O (with the exception of some surface mount 44-pin PICs which have dedicated lines for debugging) and loss of some on-chip features.

Some devices do not have on-chip debug support, due to cost or lack of pins. Some larger chips also have no debug module. To debug these devices, a special -ICD version of the chip mounted on a daughter board which provides dedicated ports is required. Some of these debug chips are able to operate as more than one type of chip by the use of selectable jumpers on the daughter board. This allows broadly identical architectures that do not feature all the on-chip peripheral devices to be replaced by a single -ICD chip. For example: the 16F690-ICD will function as one of six different parts, each of which features none, some or all of five on-chip peripherals.

In-circuit emulators
Microchip offers three full in-circuit emulators: the MPLAB ICE2000 (parallel interface, a USB converter is available); the newer MPLAB ICE4000 (USB 2.0 connection); and most recently, the REAL ICE (USB 2.0 connection). All such tools are typically used in conjunction with MPLAB IDE for source-level interactive debugging of code running on the target.

Operating systems
PIC projects may utilize real-time operating systems such as FreeRTOS, AVIX RTOS, uRTOS, Salvo RTOS or other similar libraries for task scheduling and prioritization.

An open source project by Serge Vakulenko adapts 2.11BSD to the PIC32 architecture, under the name RetroBSD. This brings a familiar Unix-like operating system, including an onboard development environment, to the microcontroller, within the constraints of the onboard hardware.

Parallax
Parallax produced a series of PICmicro-like microcontrollers known as the Parallax SX. It is currently discontinued. Designed to be architecturally similar to the PIC microcontrollers used in the original versions of the BASIC Stamp, SX microcontrollers replaced the PIC in several subsequent versions of that product.

Parallax's SX are 8-bit RISC microcontrollers, using a 12-bit instruction word, which run fast at 75 MHz (75 MIPS). They include up to 4096 12-bit words of flash memory and up to 262 bytes of random access memory, an eight bit counter and other support logic. There are software library modules to emulate I²C and SPI interfaces, UARTs, frequency generators, measurement counters and PWM and sigma-delta A/D converters. Other interfaces are relatively easy to write, and existing modules can be modified to get new features.

PKK Milandr
Russian PKK Milandr produces microcontrollers using the PIC17 architecture as the 1886 series. Program memory consists of up to 64kB Flash memory in the 1886VE2U (1886ВЕ2У) or 8kB EEPROM in the 1886VE5U (1886ВЕ5У). The 1886VE5U (1886ВЕ5У) through 1886VE7U (1886ВЕ7У) are specified for the military temperature range of -60 °C to +125 °C. Hardware interfaces in the various parts include USB, CAN, I2C, SPI, as well as A/D and D/A converters. The 1886VE3U (1886ВЕ3У) contains a hardware accelerator for cryptographic functions according to GOST 28147-89. There are even radiation-hardened chips with the designations 1886VE8U (1886ВЕ8У) and 1886VE10U (1886ВЕ10У).

ELAN Microelectronics
ELAN Microelectronics Corp. in Taiwan make a line of microcontrollers based on the PIC16 architecture, with 13-bit instructions and a smaller (6-bit) RAM address space.

Holtek Semiconductor
Holtek Semiconductor make a large number of very cheap microcontrollers (as low as 8.5 cents in quantity ) with a 14-bit instruction set strikingly similar to the PIC16.

Other manufacturers in Asia
Many ultra-low-cost OTP microcontrollers from Asian manufacturers, found in low-cost consumer electronics are based on the PIC architecture or modified form. Most clones only target the baseline parts (PIC16C5x/PIC12C50x). Microchip has attempted to sue some manufacturers when the copying is particularly egregious, without success.

title: PIC microcontrollers