14076579

Paragraph Number

123

In one embodiment, the decoder for the secondary, inner error correcting code may include a soft-decision decoder. For example, in a certain embodiment, the secondary ECC module 304 includes a soft decision module 402. The soft decision module 402, in a further embodiment, is configured to decode the at least one ECC chunk encoded with multiple error correcting codes using a soft-decision decoder with the secondary, inner error correcting code. In some embodiments, a soft-decision decoder may decode a code word for the secondary/inner error correcting code using “soft information” that includes more than one bit of information for each bit of the code word. For example, in one embodiment, the soft decision module 402 may use an analog or multiple-bit value as soft information to indicate a reliability for each bit of the code word. By using soft information, the soft decision module 402 may, in some embodiments, be able to decode an ECC chunk that would be otherwise uncorrectable using the secondary/inner error correcting code.

Added by DJM 2 2021