Systems and methods for more efficiently decoding generalized product codes (GPC) are described. A receiving device equipped with a decoder is configured to receive GPC-encoded signals and implement an early termination method to avoid executing multiple operations of the decoding scheme typically used by the receiving device. The receiving device can identify whether a particular condition is satisfied when decoding a signal, and if the condition is satisfied, can omit certain operations of the decoding scheme and thereby reduce power consumption. The particular condition can be satisfied when the syndromes for sign bits in a codeword associated with the received signal are zero.