Patent ID: 7039627

Claim:
A method for performing a radix search of a data structure stored in a computer readable medium of a computer device, wherein the data structure comprises a plurality of data structure entries grouped into a plurality of related portions, and wherein the radix search includes the step of serially accessing each one of the plurality of related portions of the data structure to obtain a radix search result, wherein the method includes the steps of: selecting a reference table based on a value of a selectable parameter in a data structure entry, the reference table containing a set of data bits; receiving base address and a key comprised of a plurality of sets of bits; indexing the reference table using one of the sets of bits in the key to obtain a reference table entry, wherein at least a subset of bits of the reference table entry is processed as either transition bits or valid bits in accordance with the selectable parameter of an associated data structure entry to provide a processed reference table entry; and serially indexing the data structure using one of either the base address or a combined address to determine a result index, wherein the combined address is comprised of an address provided in a result of a previous index of the data structure and the processed reference table entry.