Berlin, November 11th, 2025

Kithara EtherCAT Master: The Fast Automation Solution

The Kithara EtherCAT Master offers a powerful key technology for demanding real-time applications in industrial automation. Developed to fully leverage the benefits of the EtherCAT standard alongside those of the Windows operating system, it enables a fast, reliable, and easy-to-apply control solution for the widely used industrial Ethernet.

The Kithara EtherCAT Master excels with its seamless implementation into Windows operating systems. Internally, it is based on the priority-controlled, preemptive real-time multitasking system. By utilizing hardware parallelism across multiple CPU cores, different real-time tasks can be distributed. This provides high scalability of real-time execution, extending to the best possible real-time performance on exclusively used CPU cores. Created as an open function library, the EtherCAT Master allows for the coherent integration of devices into the automation process. This, in contrast to other EtherCAT variants, enables far more flexible and cost-effective solutions that are easier to implement.

Benefit from our decades of experience as a specialist in Windows-based real-time automation. The Kithara EtherCAT Master has long been a successful key technology of the RTOS Kithara RealTime Suite and is constantly being kept up-to-date.

The Four Most Important Features:

Simplicity:

  • Saves the effort and cost of using complicated real-time operating systems.
  • Enables the use of the familiar Windows development environment.
  • Automatically detects the EtherCAT topology using XML files or the SII protocol.
  • The Master is modular, so you only use the functions you truly need.

2. Performance:

  • The Kithara EtherCAT Master was developed with a focus on real-time performance.
  • The real-time system runs on exclusively-used CPU cores in parallel with Windows without negatively influencing each other.
  • This allows for cycle times as low as 50 µs, reaction times for I/O data processing in the microsecond range, and the fastest possible PDO/SDO communication.

3. Additional Protocols and Functions
The Master supports the most relevant EtherCAT protocols and functions:

  • Synchronization with Distributed Clocks (DC)
  • Integration of Ethernet devices (EoE)
  • File access to all network participants (FoE)
  • Support for the Sercos interface for demanding motion control applications (SoE)
  • Hot Connect to flexibly adapt the topology during system operation (HC)
  • Cable Redundancy, which allows operation to continue even in the event of unintended communication interruptions (CR)
  • Certified safety functionality with SIL 3 according to IEC 61508 (FSoE)

4. Scalability thanks to PC Slaves and EAP
For even greater flexibility, commercial PCs can also be used as EtherCAT slaves and integrated into EtherCAT networks. This provides opportunities for complex PC-based communication with the EtherCAT network beyond the master side, as implementing computers as slaves allows sophisticated automation processes to be designed, implemented, and adapted more specifically. The EtherCAT Automation Protocol (EAP) offers even more comprehensive control extending up to the control level, allowing real-time communication between all end devices within a network. This includes, for example, all PC-based controls, machines, test benches, conveyor belts, robots, quality assurance systems, or MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems).

Further information material about our products can be found in the download area.