Apparatuses and methods for staircase code encoding and decoding for storage devices

An apparatus comprising:

• a staircase code encoder configured to generate a staircase code, the staircase code comprising a plurality of horizontal component codewords spanning a plurality of rows of a block of the staircase code and a plurality of vertical component codewords spanning a plurality of columns of the block of the staircase code,
• wherein a horizontal component codeword of the plurality of horizontal component codewords and a vertical component codeword of the plurality of vertical component codewords encode a plurality of data bits;
• a staircase code decoder configured to decode the block to retrieve the plurality of data bits, wherein in response to completion of computing a horizontal syndrome for a horizontal step in the block of the staircase code, partially computing vertical syndromes of a subsequent step in the block of the staircase code;
• and
• a hybrid decode circuit configured to access the horizontal and vertical syndromes and determine a location of one or more erroneous bits in the horizontal or vertical component codewords based on the horizontal and vertical syndromes, respectively.