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What is a Content-Addressable Memory (CAM) circuit and how does it differ from RAM?

What is the primary operational difference between Content-Addressable Memory (CAM) and address-based memory like RAM?

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By Renu Answered 1 year ago

Content-Addressable Memory (CAM) is a specialized integrated circuit that returns the address of stored data matching an input query in a single clock cycle, unlike RAM which requires an address to access data. A Ternary CAM (TCAM) allows "don't-care" bits. It's implemented with comparison circuitry in each memory cell, making it faster for search but significantly more power-hungry, denser, and more expensive than RAM. CAMs are used in network routers for fast table lookups (e.g., MAC/IP address forwarding).

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