Patent ID: 7388768

Claim:
A semiconductor device comprising: a first bank; a second bank; and buses connected to said first bank and said second bank, wherein each of said first and second banks has a first CAM array, a second CAM array, a sense amplifier block which is disposed between said first CAM array and said second CAM array, a read circuit block, a write circuit block, and a search line driver block, said first and second CAM arrays have multiple bit lines, multiple search lines disposed in parallel to said multiple bit lines, multiple word lines which orthogonally intersect said multiple bit lines, and multiple CAM cells disposed at intersections between said multiple bit lines and said multiple word lines, respectively, said sense amplifier block has multiple sense amplifiers as many as the number of bit lines included in said first or second CAM array, said read circuit block has multiple read circuits as many as the number of bit lines included in said first or second CAM array, said write circuit block has multiple write circuits as many as the number of bit lines included in said first or second CAM array, said search line driver block has multiple search line drivers as many as the number of search lines included in said first or second CAM array, each of said multiple sense amplifiers is connected to one of said multiple bit lines included in said first CAM array and one of said multiple bit lines included in said second CAM array, said bit lines which form a pair and are connected to each of said multiple sense amplifiers are connected to said bus via any one of said multiple read circuits and any one of said multiple write circuits, and said multiple search lines are connected to said bus via said multiple search line drivers.