A novel associative memory architecture for quick matching

Many data processing applications, like databases, data warehouses, data mining, OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing), require the search of items in a table stored in memory. The time required to find an item stored in memory cab be reduced considerably if stored data can be identified for access by the content of the data itself rather than by an address. A memory unit accessed by content rather than location is called an associative memory or content addressable memory (CAM). This type of memory is accessed simultaneously and in parallel on the basis of data content rather than by specific address or location. When a word is to be read from an associative memory, the content of the word or the database record, or part of the word or the database record, is specified. The memory locates all words or database records that match the specified content and marks them for reading. Because of its organization …