{
  "slug": "maximum-distance-separable-code",
  "term": "Maximum distance separable code",
  "aliases": [
    "MDS code"
  ],
  "definition": "A maximum distance separable code achieves minimum distance n - k + 1 for length n and dimension k, allowing recovery from any n - k known symbol erasures.",
  "note": "Recovery assumes correct surviving symbols and known positions; MDS does not describe their physical placement or integrity validation. See the systematic Reed-Solomon construction and erasure-channel contract in RFC 5510. [rfc5510]",
  "status": "shipping",
  "advantages": [],
  "limitations": [
    "The any-subset guarantee is conditional on the actual code construction, not merely its redundancy count."
  ],
  "related": [
    "reed-solomon-code",
    "erasure-coding",
    "systematic-code",
    "locally-repairable-code",
    "failure-domain"
  ],
  "supersedes": [],
  "supersededBy": [],
  "firstSeen": null,
  "lastSeen": null,
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "rfc5510",
      "title": "Lacan, Roca, Peltotalo and Peltotalo. RFC 5510 (2009), sections 3.1, 8.2-8.4: systematic encoding and the erasure-channel assumption.",
      "url": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5510.html",
      "accessed": "2026-10-13"
    },
    {
      "id": "fast2009",
      "title": "Plank, Luo, Schuman, Xu and Wilcox-O'Hearn. A Performance Evaluation and Examination of Open-Source Erasure Coding Libraries For Storage. FAST 2009, sections 2, 4-7.",
      "url": "https://static.usenix.org/events/fast09/tech/full_papers/plank/plank_html/",
      "accessed": "2026-10-13"
    }
  ],
  "updated": "2026-10-13"
}