Patent ID: 6961808

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: means for programming an associative memory with a plurality of sets of entries, each of the plurality of sets of entries including a different one of a plurality of unique decoder fields; means for acquiring a piece of information including a data item and a nested flag indication signifying whether or not a nested operation is to be performed using the data item included in said piece of information; and means for performing the nested operation using the data item extracted from said piece of information in response to the nested flag indication signifying to perform the nested operation, the nested operation including producing a predetermined sequence of a plurality of lookup words with a predetermined sequence of decoder fields of the plurality of unique decoder fields, wherein each of said produced plurality of lookup words includes the data item extracted from said piece of information and a respective particular decoder field of the predetermined sequence of decoder fields; and means for performing a lookup operation in the associative memory using each of said produced plurality of lookup words to produce a plurality of lookup results corresponding to the data item with each of the predetermined sequence of decoder fields.