1. A single stage design employed by a soft-in soft-out (SISO) decoder that determines a min input or a max input from among a plurality of inputs, the single stage design comprising: a comparison functional block that performs comparison of each 2 element combinations of the plurality of inputs thereby generating a plurality of comparison results; a select signal generation functional block that employs the plurality of comparison results to generate at least one select signal; and a multiplexor (MUX) that receives each of the plurality of inputs and that selects the min input or the max input from among the plurality of inputs based on the at least one select signal.