Segmented Match-Line and Charge-Sharing Based Low-Cost TCAM

This brief presents a segmented match-line (ML) and charge-sharing based search scheme for low-cost ternary contents addressable memory (TCAM). In the proposed TCAM, a first-round search operation is performed on half cells located in even columns. During the first-round search, most of the mismatch cases are filtered out while remaining few mismatched cases that is misrecognized as the matched case. To complete the search operation in a low-power manner, a charge-sharing between the segmented MLs is used for the second-round search operation. The proposed 16KB 16T-NOR TCAM macro has been implemented using a 28nm CMOS technology. Numerical results show that the proposed TCAM improves sensing delay up to 5.6x faster and saves search energy-delay-product by 83% compared to the conventional approaches.