The digital versatile disk (DVD), an emerging standard of optical storage, provides a higher capacity than audio CD, CD-ROM or video CD (VCD). To mitigate the errors introduced during manufacturing or by user damage, a Reed-Solomon Product-Code (RS-PC) is used in DVD for error correction. For this application, the authors present an RS-PC decoder chip with a dual-frame-buffer architecture. The decoder chip contains two frame buffer controllers that interface with two off-chip frame buffers, a (182,172) row RS decoder and a (208,192) column RS decoder. The chip uses a cell library in a 0.6 /spl mu/m SPDM CMOS process. The 99-pin chip is packaged in a 100 LDCQFP package, where 48 pins are for frame buffer interface and can be eliminated with embedded frame buffers. The row and column RS decoders work at 33 MHz with a 3 V supply. The RS-PC decoder is currently limited in speed by the off-chip frame buffer to about 18 MHz. The power dissipation is 102 mW at 33 MHz.