Imagine using an online banking app to deposit money into your account. Like all information sent over the internet, those communications could be corrupted by noise that inserts errors into the data.

To overcome this problem, senders encode data before they are transmitted, and then a receiver uses a decoding algorithm to correct errors and recover the original message. In some instances, data are received with reliability information that helps the decoder figure out which parts of a transmission are likely errors.

This new decoder chip uses a universal decoding algorithm that MIT researchers previously developed that can unravel any error-correcting code. It has broken the record for energy-efficient decoding, performing between 10 and 100 times better than other hardware. Image credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a decoder chip that employs a new statistical model to use this reliability information in a way that’s much simpler and faster than conventional techniques.

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