Trends in specialty memories-from FIFOs to CAMs

Specialty memories provide economical solutions via architecture, rather than through improvement in manufacturing costs gained through very high volume production. Specialty memory devices allow the designer to solve his board area, critical timing, data flow bottlenecks, etc. in ways that are not practical using high-volume standard memory devices. Examples of specialty memory devices include cache tag RAMs, burst memory for secondary and primary cache arrays, memories with on-chip address latches, synchronous RAM, FIFO memories, dual-port memories, CAMs, and others