300 megabit/second Berlekamp decoder for binary BCH codes

A very fast, parallel, combinatorial Berlekamp decoder that can perform the second step in binary BCH decoding at rates exceeding 300 Mb/s is presented. The circuit given is for the t=3 case. It is possible to build a t=5 decoder that can operate faster than 100 Mb/s. In addition to the Berlekamp section, the complete BCH decoder also requires a syndrome generator and a root finder. These can be implemented in a straightforward way with sequential circuits and ROMs or fast static RAMs. For the t=3 code, there are only three syndrome components yielding 48 clock cycles for 255 incoming bits.<>