A decoder for short BCH codes with high decoding efficiency and low power for emerging memories

In this paper, a double-error-correcting and triple-error-detecting (DEC-TED) Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) code decoder with high decoding efficiency and low power for error correction in emerging memories is presented. To increase the decoding efficiency, we propose an adaptive error correction technique for the DEC-TED BCH code that detects the number of errors in a codeword immediately after syndrome generation and applies a different error correction algorithm depending on the error conditions. With the adaptive error correction technique, the average decoding latency and power consumption are significantly reduced owing to the increased decoding efficiency. To further reduce the power consumption, an invalid-transition-inhibition technique is proposed to remove the invalid transitions caused by glitches of syndrome vectors in the error-finding block. Synthesis results with an industry-compatible 65-nm technology library show that the proposed decoders for the (79, 64, 6) BCH code take only 37%-48% average decoding latency and achieve more than 70% power reduction compared to the conventional fully parallel decoder under the 10^-4-10^-2 raw bit-error rate.