Configurable hierarchical comma-free reed-solomon decoding circuit and method thereof

A configurable hierarchical comma-free Reed-Solomon decoding circuit comprising:

• an input-pattern generator generating a combination of at least one cyclic shift for a received comma-free Reed-Solomon (CFRS) code with an arbitrary cyclic shift, outputting said combination by a hierarchical parallel way, and further comprising
• a shift register receiving codewords of said CFRS code, performing cyclic shifts on said codewords of said CFRS code, and outputting said CFRS code with a plurality of sets of cyclic shifts;
• a coefficient multiplexer including a plurality of multiplexers with different sizes, receiving said codewords, performing comparisons on said codewords, and outputting comparison results;
• and
• a processing element (PE) array including a plurality of processing elements, performing related comparisons on all probable cyclic shifts generated by said shift register and all CFRS codes, and outputting comparison results;
• a boundary processing element (BPE) array including a plurality of boundary processing elements, receiving and performing comparisons on values output by said input-pattern generator, and storing larger values in a register;
• a group index multiplexer attaching group indexes to related values output by said processing element array and transmitting indexed said related values to said boundary processing element array, wherein said boundary processing element array performs comparisons to obtain a coefficient required by CFRS decoding;
• and
• a cyclic shift counter outputting said cyclic shifts.