Techniques for reducing the latency for decoding product codewords with minimal hardware architecture changes are described. In an example, a system accesses and decodes a generalized product code (GPC) codeword by using at least one of a plurality of Chase decoding procedures available on the system. A first Chase decoding procedure is configured according to first values for a set of decoding parameters. A second Chase decoding procedure is configured according to second values for the set of decoding parameters. The second values are different from the first values. The first Chase decoding procedure has a smaller latency and a higher bit error rate (BER) relative to the second Chase decoding procedure based on the first values and the second values for the set of decoding parameters.