Method and apparatus for performing low-density parity-check (LDPC) code operations using a multi-level permutation

A method of implementing an LDPC processing operation, said processing operation being one of an encoding and decoding operation, the method comprising:

• sequentially passing each of a plurality of Z element vectors through a permuter positioned between a memory used to store said plurality of Z element vectors and a Z element vector processor unit including Z processing elements, each Z element vector including Z elements where Z is an integer value greater than 2;
• and
• controlling said permuter to perform a factorable permutation operation on at least one of the Z element vectors passed between said memory and said vector processing unit to reorder the elements in said at least one Z element vector, said step of performing a factorable permutation operation including:
• performing a first reordering operation on a first subset within said at least one Z element vector to change the order of elements within the first subset of said at least one Z element vector;
• and
• performing a second reordering operation on the contents of each of a plurality of equally sized subsets within said at feast one Z element vector to change the order of at least some of the elements in each of said plurality of equally sized subsets, the same second reordering operation being performed on each equally sized subset subset to produce the same change in the order of elements within each of said plurality of equally sized subsets.