The central timing system is an important part of the central control system on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST)

and it is the base of the central control system to control the timing and trigger of every subsystem. Based on the distributed architecture

this project established a central timing system on the EAST Tokamak. The central timing system has the ability to divide the 32 MHz system clock with any integer from 0 to 65535

and it can delay the system trigger signal with the longest delay interval of 4294 s under 1 μs resolu- tion. This timing system is stable and was used successfully in the first physics experiment of the EAST supercon- ducting Tokamak in September 2006.