CNTFET based design of content addressable memory cells

Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistor (CNTFET) with 1-D band structure providing high carrier velocity on account of ballistic transport operation and low OFF current capability has proved to be a promising alternative to the conventional CMOS technology. This paper presents novel designs of content addressable memory (CAM) cells using CNTFETs. A CAM performs parallel data comparison with data storage. Binary CAM (BCAM) performs exact-match searches while Ternary CAM (TCAM) provides an added flexibility of pattern matching with the use of don´t care. HSPICE simulation results are reported to show that the three memory operations of the proposed CAM cells perform correctly at 0.9 V power supply. It is also shown that the presented BCAM and TCAM cell achieves a great improvement in search delay by 84% and 75% respectively compared to CNTFET based conventional cells.