Patent ID: 8885378

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: one or more content-addressable memories configured to store an overall plurality of priority-ordered content-addressable memory entries, and configured to perform content-addressable memory lookup operations to produce matching results; memory configured to store a plurality of lookup priority values, and configured to retrieve a particular lookup priority value of the plurality of lookup priority values based on a matching result; and control hardware logic configured to initiate a first lookup operation based on a base lookup word on a first plurality of the overall plurality of priority-ordered content-addressable memory entries stored in said one or more content-addressable memories to produce a first matching result, and then to retrieve a first lookup priority value from said memory based on the first matching result, and configured to initiate a second lookup operation based on the base lookup word on a second plurality of the overall plurality of priority-ordered content-addressable memory entries stored in said one or more content-addressable memories to produce a second matching result, and then to retrieve a second lookup priority value from said memory based on the second matching result; and configured to identify the first matching result as an overall matching result when the first lookup priority value is higher priority than the second lookup priority value and to identify the second matching result as the overall matching result when the second lookup priority value is higher priority than the first lookup priority value.