1 research outputs found
Analog content addressable memories with memristors
A content-addressable-memory compares an input search word against all rows
of stored words in an array in a highly parallel manner. While supplying a very
powerful functionality for many applications in pattern matching and search, it
suffers from large area, cost and power consumption, limiting its use. Past
improvements have been realized by using memristors to replace the
static-random-access-memory cell in conventional designs, but employ similar
schemes based only on binary or ternary states for storage and search.
We propose a new analog content-addressable-memory concept and circuit to
overcome these limitations by utilizing the analog conductance tunability of
memristors. Our analog content-addressable-memory stores data within the
programmable conductance and can take as input either analog or digital search
values. Experimental demonstrations, scaled simulations and analysis show that
our analog content-addressable-memory can reduce area and power consumption,
which enables the acceleration of existing applications, but also new computing
application areas