Nor-Type Content Addressable Memories Based on Pulse Discharge

• Main Authors: Yi-Shen Hsieh, 謝乙伸
• Other Authors: 賴飛羆
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/71021358566576543517

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 電機工程學研究所 === 97 === The design of the low power VLSI is one of the most important issue; in chip design, because the development of the process causes smaller and smaller chip area and the development of the technology makes higher and higher frequency and the huge increase of the number of transistors. Therefore, the unit area of the chip produces high power consumption and heat, and the heat directly affects the performance. Therefore, the development of the design technology goes on low power technology. Content Addressable Memories (CAM) is mainly applied in network architecture hardware on chip such as switch, router and network interface; therefore, the improvement of CAMs directly affects the performance of the network application. In the history of CAMs, the improvement of CAMs begins from the NAND-Type CAM which has the characteristic of saving power but spending much time and the NOR-Type CAM which has the characteristic of saving time but spending much power, and the new architecture is traded off from these two architectures to save power and time. In this master thesis, we design a low swing NOR-Type CAM by the pulse discharge technology. The approach is to produce different voltage drop by different capacitances through charge sharing characteristic in the condition of providing the same discharge at calculation state. According to the simulation result, we save 88% power consumption and 78% delay.