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An unusual form of memory exists that blends the two key aspects we discussed:
technology and memory organization. The form is known as a Content Addressable
Memory (CAM). As we will see, a CAM does much more than merely store data items
— it includes hardware for high-speed searching.
The easiest way to think about a CAM is to view it as memory that has been organized
as a two-dimensional array. Each row, which is used to store an item, is called
a slot. In addition to allowing a processor to place a value in each slot, a CAM allows
a processor to specify a search key and request the hardware to perform a search. Figure
10.12 illustrates the organization of a CAM.
As the figure shows, a search key is the same size as a slot in the CAM. For the
most basic form of a CAM, the search mechanism performs an exact match. That is,
the CAM hardware compares the key against each slot, and reports whether a match
was found. Unlike a search performed by a conventional processor, however, a CAM
reports results instantly. In essence, each slot in a CAM contains hardware that performs
the comparison — because all slots operate in parallel, the time required to perform
the search does not depend on the number of slots.
Of course, parallel search hardware makes CAM extremely expensive. Thus, an
architect only uses a CAM when lookup speed is more important than cost. For example,
in a high speed Internet router, the system must check each incoming packet to
determine whether other packets have arrived previously from the same source. To handle
high speed connections, some designs use a CAM to store a list of source identifiers.
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