Patent ID: 7571278

Claim:
A hardware accelerator, comprising: a content access memory (CAM) configured to accelerate, in a first and a second stage, string comparison operations in an application server, said CAM including: a key string position identification mechanism configured, for operation in the first stage, to identify positions of key strings from a payload portion of a packet directly input to the CAM with a header portion of the packet being excluded from being input to the CAM, the positions of the key stings being variable within the payload portion; a key string content extraction mechanism configured, for operation in the first stage, to extract actual values of the key strings; and a key string comparison mechanism configured, for operation in the second stage, to directly compare the extracted actual values of the keys strings to existing non-hashed CAM entries to output session state information from said CAM when a match exists, a creation of the session state information being prior to and unresponsive to any string comparison operations performed by the CAM, wherein the string comparison operations are performed entirely in an absence of any hash operations being applied to the payload portion, and wherein an existence of a match to output the session state information is determined entirely in an absence of any matching operations being applied to the session state information.