Data Acquisition and Computing at H.E.S.S.

Ulli Schwanke
HU Berlin

The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) explores the
non-thermal Universe using the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique
for detection of high-energy (>100 GeV) gamma-rays. The experiment is
located in the Khomas Highlands of Namibia and comprises currently
four Cherenkov Telescopes. The talk provides an overview of the
detector, trigger and data acquisition (DAQ) hardware, and describes the
implementation of the DAQ as a distributed network of C++ and Python
objects that use CORBA for inter-process communication. It also presents
aspects of the software design and the computing infrastructure of the
experiment.