Associative memory

Associative Memory Introduction Most memory devices store and retrieve data by addressing specific memory locations. As a result, this path often becomes the limiting factor for systems that rely on fast memory access. The time required to find an item stored in memory can be reduced considerably if the stored data item can be identified for access by the content of the data itself rather than by its address. Memory that is accessed in this …

…high-bandwidth address filtering, user privilege, security, or encryption information on a packet-by-packet basis for high-performance data switches, firewalls, bridges, and routers. CAM has also been successfully implemented in many other applications including database and parallel processing. In computer hardware implementation, specific CAM designs are often used in high-performance architectures such as computer cache and virtual memory management such as in address buffers for virtual memory, branch prediction buffer and common data bus for associate writes.