The ET1100 EtherCAT ASIC offers a cost-effective and compact solution for realizing EtherCAT slaves. It processes the EtherCAT protocol in the hardware and therefore ensures high-performance and real-time capability, independent of any downstream slave microcontrollers and associated software. Through its three process data interfaces ®C digital I/O, SPI and 8/16?bit ¶ÃC ®C the EtherCAT ASIC enables realization of simple digital modules without microcontrollers and development of intelligent devices with own processor. The ASIC features distributed clocks that enable high-precision synchronization (