Patent ID: 6493792
Filing Date: 2002-12-10
Classification: G06F,G11C

Abstract:
A method for reading out tag values for each CAM entry stored in a CAM, comprising the method steps of:storing an N bit wide tag value for each of M CAM entries in the CAM; selecting one of N bits; generating an N bit wide word having the selected bit high; comparing the N bit wide word with all of the M entries simultaneously by performing a CAM operation; generating a hit/miss signal corresponding to the result of each compare, wherein, the M hit/miss signals indicate the value of the selected bit for each M entries; storing the M hit/miss signals; wherein, a hit indicates that the stored tag bit is a binary one, and a miss indicates a binary zero; the step of comparing the N bit wide word with all of the M entries simultaneously by performing a CAM operation, further comprising the method step of: repeating the compare step N times for all N bits of the tag, wherein M bits of data are recorded for each compare step, and the entire contents of the tag portion of the CAM array is accumulated.