Testing Random Defect and Process Variation Induced Comparison Faults of TCAMs With Asymmetric Cells

This paper presents a march-like testT<sub>AC-P</sub> to cover comparison faults of ternary content addressable memories (TCAMs) with asymmetric cells. The T<sub>AC-P</sub> only requires 4<i>N</i> Write operations and (3<i>N</i>+2<i>B</i>) Compare operations for an <i>N</i> ×<i>B</i> -bit TCAM with Hit and priority address encoder outputs. We show that the test also can cover search time failures induced by process variation in the comparison circuit of a TCAM. Furthermore, a test T<sub>MF</sub> for match failures induced by the process variation in the comparison circuit of a TCAM is also presented.

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