[en] This paper describes the method used to drive Pockels cells on the 20-arm Shiva laser for inertial confinement fusion research at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Shiva became operational last fall, and has just completed a series of 20-arm target shots. It uses two pockels cell gates in each laser arm for suppression of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) that can damage or destroy the target before the main pulse arrives. Two additional Pockels cells are used in the preamplification stages, so that a total of 42 cells must be driven by the pulser system