Maxtor Corporation

Christine Imrich

Lih-Jyh Weng

Dana Hall

A system determines the multiplicative inverse of A&isin;GF(2 ) by representing A using a selected basis in which basis elements are squares of one another, and performing various operations that involve raising A to powers of 2 as cyclic rotations of A. The system also performs multiplication operations over GF(2 ) or subfields thereof by calculating the coefficients of the product of two elements A and B that are represented using the selected basis as combinations of the coefficients of cyclically rotated versions of A and B. The system further utilizes a relatively small look-up table that contains the multiplicative inverses of selected elements of a subfield of GF(2 ). The system may then cyclically rotate the multiplicative inverse values read from the table to produce the multiplicative inverses of the remaining elements of the subfield. Thereafter, as applicable, the system further manipulates the multiplicative inverse of the subfield element, to produce the multiplicative inverse of the desired element of GF(2 ). Using the selected basis, elements of GF(2 ) that are elements of the subfields have m lowest-order coefficients that are duplicates of the m highest order coefficients. Each element in the look-up table can thus be represented using only m bits, and the table can be entered with m bits.

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Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Christine Imrich