Iterative detection and decoding (IDD) employs a soft-in soft-out (SISO) detector and an SISO forward error correction (FEC) decoder in an iterative loop to improve the receiver performance in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communications. This paper describes a 256-QAM 4 $\times $ 4 prototype IDD design made up of a minimum mean square error (MMSE) detector and a nonbinary low-density parity-check (NBLDPC) decoder with the symbol size of the NBLDPC code matched to the modulation to enhance performance. By directly translating between nonbinary symbols and constellation points, the detector–decoder interface is simplified. We present a Gb/s MMSE detector using a shortened tandem scheduling, a low-latency dual-lookup reciprocal unit, an optimized interleaved microarchitecture, and a Gb/s NBLDPC decoder with efficient internal skipping paths and memory allocation. The designs were demonstrated in a 0.7-mm2 1.38-Gb/s MMSE detector and a 1.7-mm2 1.02-Gb/s-NBLDPC decoder that are integrated in a 65-nm CMOS test chip. The chip is measured to achieve 19.2 pJ/b in detection and 20.1 pJ/b/iteration in decoding.