Abstract: A Reed-Solomon (RS) coding system is provided that can employ an RS code of varying correction power, and which can maintain a small area requirement. The Reed-Solomon coding system can include an RS encoder and an RS decoder. Both of these components can be implemented using primarily constant multipliers rather than more area-consuming general multipliers. For example, the programmable encoder can be realized by implementing polynomials with constant coefficients rather than variable coefficients, and a Berlekamp-Massey algorithm performed by the decoder can be realized using a serial implementation. To further reduce the area of the coding system, hardware sharing can be utilized between the RS encoder and the RS decoder.