Microchip’s PIC® microcontrollers are supported by the MPLAB® Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which is used to integrate the development, debug and software utilities available when developing code for a product. MPLAB® is the only platform you will need to develop for a Microchip microcontroller and can cover products from 6-pins to 100-pins and code space from 512 Bytes to 256kB. Language tools are available from Microchip in the form of an Assembler (MPASM™), a linker (MPLINK™) and a C Complier (MPLAB C30). Development tool support also includes software simulators, emulators, development boards and programmers. Available utilities such as Flash programming, project management and MPLIB™ Librarian are also included in the MPLAB IDE. MPLAB and most of our software development tools are available free from microchip.com. The MPLAB C30 is one notable exception, While the full version of the compiler itself isn’t free there is a student copy available from Microchip. After the first 30 days the student version continues to run, but with reduced code optimization. Beyond the Microchip tool-chain are a number of third party tool vendors that also provide valuable tool capabilities such as compilers, production programmers and software tools, including RTOS, libraries and device drivers.