In computer science, tornado codes are a class of erasure codes that support error correction and have fast encoding and decoding algorithms. Software-based implementations of tornado codes are about 100 times faster on small lengths and about 10,000 times faster on larger lengths than software-based Reed-Solomon erasure codes while having only slightly worse overhead. Tornado codes are fixed rate, near optimal erasure correcting codes that use sparse bipartite graphs to trade encoding and decoding speed for reception overhead. Since the introduction of Tornado codes, many other similar codes have emerged, most notably Online codes, LT codes and Raptor codes.
