Patent ID: 7336660

Claim:
An apparatus for processing a packet, the apparatus comprising: input interface circuitry configured to receive the packet; a context indicator generator, coupled to the input interface circuitry, configured to generate a context vector based on a characteristic of the input interface circuitry and a first subset of the packet; a lookup word field generator, coupled to the input interface circuitry, configured to generate one or more lookup word vectors based on a second subset of the packet; an associative memory, coupled to the context indicator generator and the lookup word field generator, configured to perform a lookup operation based on a lookup word to generate a lookup result, the lookup word including said one or more lookup word vectors and the context vector; a memory configured to perform a lookup operation based on the lookup result to generate a first partial address; a second memory configured to perform a lookup operation based on the first partial address and the context vector to generate a processing result; and a packet processor configured to modify or forward the packet based on the processing result.