For industrial automation applications, TI offers development platforms that are specifically designed for such applications. Among the two such platforms, one is the Industrial Communications Engine or ICE, that comes with the industrial Software Development Kit which is based on SYS/BIOS, the real-time OS from TI. There are MII and UART interfaces on this board for PRU based Industrial Communications. There is also an integrated USB to JTAG emulator to facilitate development without having to procure a JTAG based debugger tool. With the available software and hardware, one can evaluate EtherCAT now. Additional protocols are being released with incremental releases that will include PROFIBUS, POWERLINK, and more. TI is also working with open source and commercial versions of the application stacks such that no licensing is required to evaluate the solutions. All design data for the PCBs is available online for ones use at no additional cost.