It is known to carry out cyclic redundancy checks on data in many communication protocols and data storage formats. They increase the reliability of data transmission and storage by defining a check sum which may be appended to data when it is written or sent. A receiver or reader of the data can recompute the check sum to confirm the integrity of the data.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method and improved apparatus for carrying out a cyclic redundancy check in a computer system.