Error correcting method and device

Abstract

Reed-Solomon encoded data read from a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or other recording or transmission source is error corrected at high speed in an apparatus that employs a pair of byte-wide error correcting sub-circuits operating substantially in parallel. An MSB plane of a sector of received Reed-Solomon data is processed in one error correcting circuit while an LSB plane of the same sector is processed in the other circuit. Errors are corrected in each sub-circuit as may be necessary, and selection circuitry selects the corrected data, or non-corrected data, as appropriate, for each plane, and then combines the selected data to form the word-wide output data for transmission, e.g. to a host processor. The operation is pipelined and, although only one error is corrected at a time, the invention provides word-wide, error-corrected data at a data rate only a few clock cycles slower than prior art byte serial EC technology, so the effective transmission rate to the host is substantially improved.