Low Cost Ternary Content Addressable Memory Using Adaptive Matchline Discharging Scheme

This paper presents an adaptive match-line (ML) discharging scheme for low power and high speed ternary content addressable memory (TCAM). In the proposed TCAM, by employing the gated ML pulldown path and ML boosting scheme, the redundant ML discharging and SL switching are eliminated while improving the search speed. By considering the number of mismatch and ML discharging speed, the ML discharging is adaptively controlled in the proposed TCAM. The simulation results with the 65nm CMOS technology show that the proposed adaptive ML discharging scheme improves up to 19% of sensing delay and saves 81% of ML power compared to the conventional approach. When compared with the state-of-the-art work, the post-layout simulations show 10% improvement of FOM (energy/bit/search).