NA49 is a fixed-target, heavy-ion experiment at the 200 GeV/nucleon Pb
beam of the SPS at CERN, expected to take data in late 1994. Because
of the unprecedented number of charged particles (up to 2000) emerging
from a single Pb-induced nuclear reaction at these energies, the dema
nds on various parts of the experimental setup are extreme. For the da
ta acquisition system a burst input data rate of 750 Mbyte/sec from mo
re than 150,000 electronic channels has to be buffered and compressed
to allow the recording of events to magnetic media at rates around 15
Mbyte/sec with reasonable effort and cost.