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The CRC (cyclic redundancy check) was primarily an error detector, but it did allow some early error correction systems to be implemented.
There are many different CRCs but they all work in much the same way, which is that the data to be protected are divided by the CRC polynomial. This was done serially by shifting the data bits into the CRC generator at the same time as they were being written to a medium such as disk or tape or sent into a serial transmission line.
The mathematics of finite fields and sequences seems to be a long way from everyday life, but it happens in the background every time we use a computer and without it, an explanation of modern error correction cannot be given.
Here we look at one of the first practical error-correcting codes to find wide usage. Richard Hamming worked with early computers and became frustrated when errors made them crash. The rest is history.
Error correction is fascinating not least because it involves concepts that are not much used elsewhere, along with some idiomatic terminology that needs careful definition.
Errors are handled in real channels by a combination of techniques and it is the overall result that matters. This means that different media and channels can have completely different approaches to the problem, yet still deliver reliable data.
In the data recording or transmission fields, any time a recovered bit is not the same as what was supplied to the channel, there has been an error. Different types of data have different tolerances to error. Any time the error rate is in excess of the tolerance, we need to do something. Error handling is a broad term that includes everything to do with errors. It includes studying the error sensitivity of different types of data, measures to prevent or reduce errors, measures to actually correct them and measures to conceal the error if correction is not available or not possible.
Having looked at magnetic and optical storage media, John Watkinson turns to electronic memory with the emphasis on flash.
Optical disks rely totally on the ability of the pickup to follow and focus on the data track. It is taken for granted that these mechanisms are phenomenally accurate, work at high speed despite being made at low cost and need no maintenance.