Half-and-Half Compare Content Addressable Memory with Charge-Sharing Based Selective Match-Line Precharge Scheme

In this paper, we present a half-and-half compare contents addressable memory (HHC-CAM) to reduce the dynamic power consumption as well as white space between the cell array and peripheral. In the proposed HHC-CAM, by splitting the match-line (ML), almost 99% of entries are filtered out in first half-side comparison. Thanks to the reduced ML switching capacitance, 42% lower energy delay product (EDP) is achieved compared to the conventional selective precharge approach. The proposed 16KB, 10T-NOR CAM macro, has been fabricated in a 14nm FinFET technology, and the chip measurement results show the energy consumption of 0.38fJ/search/bit (560ps search delay), which is the best EDP reported in literature.