Designs Of Emerging Memory Based Non-Volatile Tcam For Internet-Of-Things (Iot) And Big-Data Processing: A 5t2r Universal Cell

Many search engines or filters for the internet- of-things and big-data employ ternary content-addressable-memory (TCAM) to suppress power consumption in the transmission of data between end-devices and servers. Nonvolatile TCAMs (nvTCAM) are designed to achieve zero standby power with smaller area overhead and faster power off/on operations than those found in conventional TCAM+NVM 2-macro schemes. In this paper, we discuss the challenges involved in the design of nvTCAMs and propose a universal 5T2R nvTCAM cell with tolerance for the various R-ratios and write parameters associated with emerging memory devices. A 128x64b-nvTCAM macro was fabricated using HfO ReRAM and a 90nm-CMOS process for concept verification.