A method of operating an internal combustion engine and corresponding device

A method for operating an internal combustion engine and corresponding arrangement are disclosed, whereby reference impulses (45) are generated in synchronisation with the cyclical movements of at least one part of the internal combustion engine. At certain fixed given time intervals in the cyclical movement at least one event time point for the occurrence of at least one event is calculated by means of an output unit (24). Furthermore, an independent clock unit (25) is provided, which generates clock impulses, the interval of which is independent of the movement and said clock impulse interval is shorter than the intervals of the reference impulses. The at least one event time point is expressed as a number of clock impulses from the independent clock unit and on reaching the number of the clock impulses the at least one event is triggered. By observing the counted clock impulses from the independent clock unit (24), between at least two sequential reference impulses a relative value is generated with information about the future time course of the movement, whereby said relative value is used to alter the number of clock impulses.