Using the Dynamic Power Source Technique to Reduce TCAM Leakage Power

Due to having an additional “don't care” state, ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) is widely used in the forwarding table of the network router. However, the power consumption of TCAM is usually considerable. Instead of reducing the TCAM dynamic power, this brief introduces a leakage-suppressed technique, called dynamic power source (DPS), in which the TCAM leakage power is minimized by connecting the prefix power source to the mask data. Based on a 45-nm predictive technology model, the simulation results show that the DPS technique can deliver a TCAM leakage power reduction of 17% for a collection of real routing tables. In addition, the DPS also improves the search performance by 11% and reduces 18% of the TCAM dynamic power dissipated in the search-line switching activity.