A method and an apparatus that has Chien search capabilities, the apparatus includes a first hardware circuit and a second hardware circuit. The first hardware circuit evaluates an error locator polynomial for a first element of a finite field over which the error locator polynomial is defined to provide a first set of intermediate results and a first Chien search result and provides the first set of intermediate results to the second hardware circuit; the second hardware circuit evaluates the error locator polynomial for a second element of the finite field to provide a second Chien search result in response to the first set of intermediate results. The first hardware circuit may be substantially bigger than the second hardware circuit and the first element may differ from the second element.