A Low-Power Ternary Content Addressable Memory With Pai-Sigma Matchlines
This paper proposes a Pai-Sigma matchline scheme to reduce the compare (search) power of a ternary content addressable memory (TCAM). The proposed matchline does not incur the issues of charge sharing and short circuit current, which typically exist in the hybrid NAND-NOR matchline. Moreover, the switching activity of the search lines of a TCAM with the proposed matchlines is low. A 32 x 64-bit TCAM with the Pai-Sigma matchlines is implemented to demonstrate the low-power feature. Results show that the compare power of the TCAM can achieve 60% energy reduction compared with the conventional NOR-type TCAM. Also, the energy consumption per bit per search of the TCAM is only 2.287 fJ/bit/search.
content addressable memories (cam) low power networking ternary cam (tcam)