Patent ID: 7912808

Claim:
A memory architecture comprising programmable intelligent search memory for content search wherein said programmable intelligent search memory (PRISM) performs regular expression based search and comprises of a plurality of programmable memory clusters for programming rules for said content search, said programmable memory clusters further comprising plurality of programmable search engines to perform search using a plurality of regular expressions, said plurality of regular expressions converted into functionally equivalent plurality of finite state automata (FSA) to program in said plurality of programmable search engines, wherein the PRISM memory clusters further comprise an FSA controller to program said plurality of regular expressions in said plurality of programmable search engines, wherein a first PRISM memory cluster is programmed with content search rules for one application and a second PRISM memory cluster is programmed with content search rules for a second application, said PRISM further comprising circuits to put said PRISM memory clusters in a power down mode, said power down mode for putting at least one of said PRISM memory clusters in a low power consumption mode when said input content comprises of data for said first application while rules for said second application are programmed in said at least one of PRISM memory cluster, said power down mode used for creating a low power programmable intelligent search memory.