Software > Error Correction > Reed Solomon > Performance

Reed Solomon Software Performance

The following table details performance numbers for a number of specific RS (n, k) implementations for two general purpose processing architectures and one digital signal processor. Numbers are provided for both decode in the presence of no error, as well as decode in the presence of maximum channel error. Note that correcting errors requires more processing power than simply validating blocks, and that the required processing power increases linearly with the error rate. Typical applications tend to keep the error rate low such that active correction is not required.

The two digit hexadecimal number in each column specifies the GF(255) primitive polynomial used to generate the underlying Galois field.

The listed performance numbers are:

CPB - Cycles Per Block, how many cpu cycles are required to perform this step of the algorithm for each block of data, and
MBPS @ 1GHz - maximum throughput in MBits/sec for each 1.0 GHz of processing power (bit rate measured on the data side, not the channel side.)

All measurements are for optimized C code for the particular architecture, compiled with GCC and -O4 optimizations. No hardware acceleration or SIMD instruction optimizations were used.

Table 1 - x86

	RS (255,191) 0x1D		RS (255,223) CCSDS 0x87		RS (255,239) 0xCF		RS (255,247) 0x2D		RS (255,251) 0x63
	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz
Encode			10854	164.4	10552.5	181.2	6406.88	308.4	5075.25	395.6
Decode (no errors)			38994	45.8	19597.5	97.6	9045	218.5	4422	454.1
Decode (max errors)			120667	14.8	52511.25	36.4	20602.5	95.9	10251	195.9
Decode (max erasures)

Table 2 - ARM 920T

	RS (255,191) 0x1D		RS (255,223) CCSDS 0x87		RS (255,239) 0xCF		RS (255,247) 0x2D		RS (255,251) 0x63
	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz
Encode	100000	15.28	51250	34.81	41000	46.63	29667	66.61	23000	87.3
Decode (no errors)	124000	12.32	70500	25.3	35000	54.63	18667	105.86	8750	229.49
Decode (max errors)	462000	3.31	218500	8.16	96500	19.81	46167	42.8	21667	92.68
Decode (max erasures)	648000	2.36	302500	5.9	142250	13.44	69334	28.5	33167	60.54

Table 3 - TI C5502

	RS (255,191) 0x1D		RS (255,223) CCSDS 0x87		RS (255,239) 0xCF		RS (255,247) 0x2D		RS (255,251) 0x63
	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz	CPB	MBPS @ 1GHz
Encode	190000	8.04	110000	16.22	65000	29.42	35000	56.46	20000	100.4
Decode (no errors)	195000	7.84	100000	17.84	45000	42.49	25000	79.04	133334	150.6
Decode (max errors)	525000	2.91	240000	7.43	110000	17.38	55000	35.93	30000	66.93
Decode (max erasures)	680000	2.25	325000	5.49	155000	12.34	80000	24.7	40000	50.2