< integrated circuit > PIC A special-purpose integrated circuit that functions as an overall manager in an interrupt driven system. It accepts requests from the peripheral equipment, determines which of the incoming requests is of the highest priority, ascertains whether the incoming request has a higher priority value than the level currently being serviced, and issues an interrupt to the CPU based on this determination.
PICs typically have eight interrupt lines, and two PICs are often cascaded to provide 15 available interrupt lines.
See also: Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller .
(2003-03-18)