A low-power precomputation-based fully parallel content-addressable memory

This paper presents a novel VLSI architecture for a fully parallel precomputation-based content-addressable memory (PB-CAM) with low-power, low-cost, and low-voltage features. This design is based on a precomputation approach that saves not only power consumption of the CAM system, but also reduces transistor count and operating voltage of the CAM cell. In addition, the proposed PB-CAM word structure adopts the static pseudo-nMOS circuit design to improve system performance. The whole design was fabricated with the TSMC 0.35-(mu)m single-poly quadruple-metal CMOS process. With a 128 words by 30 bits CAM size, the measurement results indicate that the proposed circuit works up to 100 MHz with power consumption of 33 mW at 3.3-V supply voltage and works up to 30 MHz under 1.5-V supply voltage.