A 28mn 320Kb TCAM Macro with Sub-0.8ns Search Time and 3.5+x Improvement in Delay-Area-Energy Product using Split-Controlled Single-Load 14T Cell

This work proposes a Split-Controlled Single-Load (SCSL) 14T TCAM cell to achieve (1) compact cell area, (2) reduced search delays and energy, (3) less leakage current. A 320Kb 14T-TCAM macro was fabricated using a 28nm CMOS process and modified foundry compact-area 6T cell. The resulting macro lowered search delays to just 710ps and gained a 3.5+x improvement in the figure-of-merit (delay-area-energy product), compared to conventional 16T TCAMs.