Abstract: Deinterleaving is performed using a “smart” direct memory access (DMA) function. The deinterleaver, which may be a modified DMA controller, can be programmed with a step size so that the deinterleaver reads every Nth byte from the memory. The deinterleaver automatically increments the source memory address by the step size to read successive bytes of a codeword. The deinterleaved data can be written to the same memory, to a different memory, or to some other device.