I was wondering if anyone could clarify the differences between PCD vs Recursive SNARKs(like pickles) vs Non-uniform IVC(like hypernova)
They all seem very similar to me
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Incrementally-Verifiable Computation (IVC) is a cryptographic primitive for proving the correctness of an iterated and incremental computation: the output of step $i$ of the computation is fed as input into step $i + 1$ of the computation.
Proof-Carrying Data (PCD) is a generalization of IVC to a distributed computation that unfolds over time (i.e., occurs incrementally). The key difference between IVC and PCD is that in PCD the steps of the computation are linked together in an arbitrary directed-acyclic graph (DAG), whereas in IVC the steps are linked in a simple path.
In both IVC and PCD the same computation is performed at each step. Non-uniform IVC generalizes this to allow each step to execute one of a fixed set of computations. (One can consider a further generalization of non-uniform IVC to non-uniform PCD)
Recursive SNARKs are one particular technique to construct IVC and PCD (e.g., the first implemented construction of PCD uses recursive SNARKs over cycles of curves).
