gftable

Generate file to accelerate Galois field computations

Syntax

gftable(m,prim_poly); 

Description

gftable(m,prim_poly) generates a file that can help accelerate computations in the field GF(2^m) as described by the nondefault primitive polynomial prim_poly, which can be either a polynomial character vector or an integer. prim_poly represents a primitive polynomial for GF(2^m), where 1 < m < 16, using the format described in Primitive Polynomials and Element Representations. The function places the file, called userGftable.mat, in your current working folder. If necessary, the function overwrites any writable existing version of the file.

Note

If prim_poly is the default primitive polynomial for GF(2^m) listed in the table on the gf reference page, this function has no effect. A MAT-file in your MATLAB installation already includes information that facilitates computations with respect to the default primitive polynomial.

Examples

In the example below, you expect t3 to be similar to t1 and to be significantly smaller than t2, assuming that you do not already have a userGftable.mat file that includes the (m, prim_poly) pair (8, 501). Notice that before executing the gftable command, MATLAB displays a warning and that after executing gftable, there is no warning. By executing the gftable command you save the GF table for faster calculations.

% Sample code to check how much gftable improves speed.
tic; a = gf(repmat([0:2^8-1],1000,1),8); b = a.^100; t1 = toc;
tic; a = gf(repmat([0:2^8-1],1000,1),8,501); b = a.^100; t2 = toc;
gftable(8,501); % Include this primitive polynomial in the file.
tic; a = gf(repmat([0:2^8-1],1000,1),8,501); b = a.^100; t3 = toc;

Version History

Introduced before R2006a