Design and Analysis Of Low Power High Performance Ternary Content Addressable Memory Architectures

Abstract

newline P a g e | i newline newlineABSTRACT newlineCurrently, due to the fast growth of the internet and digital newlinemedia, the bulk amounts of digital media are transmitted through newlinethe internet due to its flexibility and excellent speed. The newlineperformance of searching algorithms decides the speed of the newlineinternet. Software based search algorithms are faced with many newlinechallenges. Recently hardware search engines have allowed a large newlineapplication as an efficient method to search for content. Ternary newlinecontent addressable memory is the best option for hardware search newlineengine rather than binary content addressable memory because of newlineits wild card entry feature. The essential aspects of Ternary Content newlineAddressable Memory (TCAM) design is area efficient, low power and newlinehigh speed simultaneously. However, the low power and high speed newlineare contradictory to each other for many described architectures, newlineand thus an excellent embedding architecture is needed to obtain a newlinesuitable trade-off between them. newline At a glance, this thesis focus on design of Precharge Free newlineTernary Content Addressable (PF-TCAM) cell inturn development of newlinePF-TCAM architecture, optimized PF-TCAM architecture and low newlinepower high speed TCAM architecture. newlineThis thesis exhibits a novel TCAM architecture to fulfill low newlinepower and high speed requirement for various searching newlineAndhra University, Visakhapatnam newlineP a g e | ii newline newlineapplications. This architecture is a hybrid architecture which was newlineformulated by combining NOR type matchline structure with newlineprecharge free technique. Along with these two techniques the newlineoptimization approaches are also used for the view of optimizing newlinethe architecture. This thesis also develops novel ternary content newlineaddressable memory cell and PF-TCAM architecture. newlineConventional TCAM structures have three phases in its newlineoperation namely data write, matchline precharge and data search. newlineThe main objective of precharge free technique is to make the newlineTCAM structure free of precharge phase in its operation and to newlinelower its power consumption. The