The present invention provides a method and apparatus for quickly and efficiently processing an error correction polynomial to locate bit errors using a Chien search algorithm. In accordance with the present invention, it has been determined that multiplying the .LAMBDA. coefficients of the error locator polynomial by a scaling vector prior to performing the Chien search algorithm matrix operations, it possible to use constant coefficients in the matrix multiply logic. This enables a relatively small amount of logic to be used to perform the matrix multiplication operations of the Chien search algorithm. The Chien search algorithm logic of the present invention is configured to perform many matrix multiply operations in parallel, which enables the Chien search algorithm to be executed very quickly to locate the bit errors in the error locator polynomial. Such a large number of matrix multiply operations would normally require a very large number of gates. However, the constant coefficient matrix multiply logic configuration of the present invention that is made possible by the aforementioned scaling significantly limits the amount of logic needed to perform the matrix multiply operations. Therefore, the present invention enables very high-speed throughput with respect to error correction, and does so using a relatively small amount of logic. This renders the decoder of the present invention suitable for use in high data rate systems. Furthermore, the use of a relatively small amount of logic limits area and power consumption requirements.