-A brief CRC tutorial.
+=================================
+brief tutorial on CRC computation
+=================================
A CRC is a long-division remainder. You add the CRC to the message,
and the whole thing (message+CRC) is a multiple of the given
is used by a lot of hardware implementations, and is why so many
protocols put the end-of-frame flag after the CRC.
-It's actually the same long division you learned in school, except that
+It's actually the same long division you learned in school, except that:
+
- We're working in binary, so the digits are only 0 and 1, and
- When dividing polynomials, there are no carries. Rather than add and
subtract, we just xor. Thus, we tend to get a bit sloppy about
the polynomial from the remainder and we're back to where we started,
ready to process the next bit.
-A big-endian CRC written this way would be coded like:
-for (i = 0; i < input_bits; i++) {
- multiple = remainder & 0x80000000 ? CRCPOLY : 0;
- remainder = (remainder << 1 | next_input_bit()) ^ multiple;
-}
+A big-endian CRC written this way would be coded like::
+
+ for (i = 0; i < input_bits; i++) {
+ multiple = remainder & 0x80000000 ? CRCPOLY : 0;
+ remainder = (remainder << 1 | next_input_bit()) ^ multiple;
+ }
Notice how, to get at bit 32 of the shifted remainder, we look
at bit 31 of the remainder *before* shifting it.
32 bits later. Thus, the first 32 cycles of this are pretty boring.
Also, to add the CRC to a message, we need a 32-bit-long hole for it at
the end, so we have to add 32 extra cycles shifting in zeros at the
-end of every message,
+end of every message.
These details lead to a standard trick: rearrange merging in the
next_input_bit() until the moment it's needed. Then the first 32 cycles
can be precomputed, and merging in the final 32 zero bits to make room
-for the CRC can be skipped entirely. This changes the code to:
+for the CRC can be skipped entirely. This changes the code to::
-for (i = 0; i < input_bits; i++) {
- remainder ^= next_input_bit() << 31;
- multiple = (remainder & 0x80000000) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
- remainder = (remainder << 1) ^ multiple;
-}
+ for (i = 0; i < input_bits; i++) {
+ remainder ^= next_input_bit() << 31;
+ multiple = (remainder & 0x80000000) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
+ remainder = (remainder << 1) ^ multiple;
+ }
-With this optimization, the little-endian code is particularly simple:
-for (i = 0; i < input_bits; i++) {
- remainder ^= next_input_bit();
- multiple = (remainder & 1) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
- remainder = (remainder >> 1) ^ multiple;
-}
+With this optimization, the little-endian code is particularly simple::
+
+ for (i = 0; i < input_bits; i++) {
+ remainder ^= next_input_bit();
+ multiple = (remainder & 1) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
+ remainder = (remainder >> 1) ^ multiple;
+ }
The most significant coefficient of the remainder polynomial is stored
in the least significant bit of the binary "remainder" variable.
As long as next_input_bit is returning the bits in a sensible order, we don't
*have* to wait until the last possible moment to merge in additional bits.
-We can do it 8 bits at a time rather than 1 bit at a time:
-for (i = 0; i < input_bytes; i++) {
- remainder ^= next_input_byte() << 24;
- for (j = 0; j < 8; j++) {
- multiple = (remainder & 0x80000000) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
- remainder = (remainder << 1) ^ multiple;
+We can do it 8 bits at a time rather than 1 bit at a time::
+
+ for (i = 0; i < input_bytes; i++) {
+ remainder ^= next_input_byte() << 24;
+ for (j = 0; j < 8; j++) {
+ multiple = (remainder & 0x80000000) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
+ remainder = (remainder << 1) ^ multiple;
+ }
}
-}
-Or in little-endian:
-for (i = 0; i < input_bytes; i++) {
- remainder ^= next_input_byte();
- for (j = 0; j < 8; j++) {
- multiple = (remainder & 1) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
- remainder = (remainder >> 1) ^ multiple;
+Or in little-endian::
+
+ for (i = 0; i < input_bytes; i++) {
+ remainder ^= next_input_byte();
+ for (j = 0; j < 8; j++) {
+ multiple = (remainder & 1) ? CRCPOLY : 0;
+ remainder = (remainder >> 1) ^ multiple;
+ }
}
-}
If the input is a multiple of 32 bits, you can even XOR in a 32-bit
word at a time and increase the inner loop count to 32.