coolCAM
coolCAM moves content-addressable memory from power-hungry super-chips to ordinary embedded SoC applications that can benefit from high-performance search.
Content-Addressable Memory (CAM) is a great way to make short work of large searches. Simply present the required data to a CAM macro, and it will return the address or even perform a linked table lookup in a single cycle. Unfortunately, the power consumption of a traditional CAM architecture is so large that power distribution and heat dissipation become serious issues for large implementations.
Mentor has re-engineered CAM architecture from the ground up by directly attacking the dominant sources of active power dissipation without sacrificing silicon area. coolCAM can be configured with address-readout, table-lookup, priority-encoding, priority-decoding, or other customized options. In addition to low-power, large-macro instances, coolCAM is also available for smaller size applications such as Cache TLB.
Features and Benefites
- Based on patent-pending high-density, low-power cell design
- Implemented in standard CMOS logic process
- Single-cycle match and lookup capability
- Comprehensive search functionality
- Supports binary and true ternary formats
- Industry-leading active power, leakage current, density and speed
- Supports a wide range of clock duty cycles
- Offered in major foundry leading-edge process nodes
- Significant power reduction during CAM searches using patent-pending architecture (up to 5x lower active power)
- Ideal for networking, communications, and compression applications
- Higher yield and reliability