A novel low-energy match line sensing scheme for ternary content addressable memory using charge sharing

A new match line sensing scheme for ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) is presented in this paper. Selective precharge is combined with charge sharing technique to reduce the match line (ML) energy consumption. Simulation performed using 130nm 1.2V CMOS logic shows minimum ~35% dynamic energy reduction compared to current race (CR) scheme. The technique also achieves ~41% speed improvement. Unlike many existing schemes, the proposed scheme uses minimum number of control signals which need to be generated off-chip. Also, there is no analog control signal requiring manual tuning as has been used in CR or many CR-like schemes.