Non-volatile one-transistor-cell multiple-valued CAM with a digit-parallel-access scheme and its applications

A new high-density non-volatile multiple-valued content-addressable memory (CAM) is proposed for highly parallel search operations. Multiple-valued stored data correspond to the threshold voltage of a floating-gate MOS transistor, so that the cell circuit can be designed using only a single transistor. Since a single match line in a one-word circuit is used for performing a multi-input wired AND operation, the magnitude comparison result between multi-digit data can be obtained simultaneously. As a result, a one-word magnitude comparison with n digits can be performed by just n steps in spite of a single-transistor cell circuit and single-match-line architecture, which makes the peripheral circuit of a CAM cell array small. Moreover, typical applications clearly demonstrate that the proposed non-volatile CAM is useful as a hardware accelerator for a high-speed comparison.