A Unified Form of EVENODD and RDP Codes and Their Efficient Decoding

Array codes have been widely employed in storage systems, such as Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID). The row-diagonal parity (RDP) codes and EVENODD codes are two popular double-parity array codes. As the capacity of hard disks increases, better fault tolerance by using array codes with three or more parity disks is needed. Although many extensions of RDP codes and EVENODD codes have been proposed, the high decoding complexity is the main drawback of them. In this paper, we present a new construction for all families of EVENODD codes and RDP codes, and propose a unified form of them. Under this unified form, RDP codes can be treated as shortened codes of EVENODD codes. Moreover, an efficient decoding algorithm based on an LU factorization of Vandermonde matrix is proposed when the number of continuous surviving parity columns is no less than the number of erased information columns. The new decoding algorithm is faster than the existing algorithms when more than three information columns fail. The proposed efficient decoding algorithm is also applicable to other Vandermonde array codes. Thus the proposed MDS array code is practically very meaningful for storage systems that need higher reliability

Binary MDS Array Codes with Optimal Repair

Consider a binary maximum distance separable (MDS) array code composed of an $m\times (k+r)$ array of bits with $k$ information columns and $r$ parity columns, such that any $k$ out of $k+r$ columns suffice to reconstruct the $k$ information columns. Our goal is to provide {\em optimal repair access} for binary MDS array codes, meaning that the bandwidth triggered to repair any single failed information or parity column is minimized. In this paper, we propose a generic transformation framework for binary MDS array codes, using EVENODD codes as a motivating example, to support optimal repair access for $k+1\le d \le k+r-1$, where $d$ denotes the number of non-failed columns that are connected for repair; note that when $d<k+r-1$, some of the chosen $d$ columns in repairing a failed column are specific. In addition, we show how our transformation framework applies to an example of binary MDS array codes with asymptotically optimal repair access of any single information column and enables asymptotically or exactly optimal repair access for any column. Furthermore, we present a new transformation for EVENODD codes with two parity columns such that the existing efficient repair property of any information column is preserved and the repair access of parity column is optimal

Multi-Layer Transformed MDS Codes with Optimal Repair Access and Low Sub-Packetization

An $(n,k)$ maximum distance separable (MDS) code has optimal repair access if the minimum number of symbols accessed from $d$ surviving nodes is achieved, where $k+1\le d\le n-1$. Existing results show that the sub-packetization $\alpha$ of an $(n,k,d)$ high code rate (i.e., $k/n>0.5$) MDS code with optimal repair access is at least $(d-k+1)^{\lceil\frac{n}{d-k+1}\rceil}$. In this paper, we propose a class of multi-layer transformed MDS codes such that the sub-packetization is $(d-k+1)^{\lceil\frac{n}{(d-k+1)\eta}\rceil}$, where $\eta=\lfloor\frac{n-k-1}{d-k}\rfloor$, and the repair access is optimal for any single node. We show that the sub-packetization of the proposed multi-layer transformed MDS codes is strictly less than the existing known lower bound when $\eta=\lfloor\frac{n-k-1}{d-k}\rfloor>1$, achieving by restricting the choice of $d$ specific helper nodes in repairing a failed node. We further propose multi-layer transformed EVENODD codes that have optimal repair access for any single node and lower sub-packetization than the existing binary MDS array codes with optimal repair access for any single node. With our multi-layer transformation, we can design new MDS codes that have the properties of low computational complexity, optimal repair access for any single node, and relatively small sub-packetization, all of which are critical for maintaining the reliability of distributed storage systems