The ATLAS tau trigger has three levels: the first one (L1) is hardware based and uses FPGAs, while the second (L2) and third levels (EF -Event Filter-) are software based and use commodity computers (2 x Intel Harpertown quad-core 2.5 GHz), running scientific linux 4. In this contribution we discuss both the physics characteristics of tau leptons and the technical solutions to quick data access and fast algorithms. We show that L1 selects narrow jets in the calorimeter with an overall rejection against QCD jets of 300, whilst L2 and EF (referred together as High Level Trigger -HLT-) use all the detectors with full granularity and apply a typical rejection of 15 within the stringent timing requirements of the LHC. In the HLT there are two complementary approaches: specialized, fast algorithms are used at L2, while more refined and sophisticated algorithms, imported from the offline, are utilized in the EF
