Towards Energy Efficient Memristor-based TCAM for Match-Action Processing

Match-action processors play a crucial role of communicating end-users in the Internet by computing network paths and enforcing administrator policies. The computation process uses a specialized memory called Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) to store processing rules and use header information of network packets to perform a match within a single clock cycle. Currently, TCAM memories consume huge amounts of energy resources due to the use of traditional transistor-based CMOS technology. In this article, we motivate the use of a novel component, the memristor, for the development of a TCAM architecture. Memristors can provide energy efficiency, non-volatility, and better resource density as compared to transistors. We have proposed a novel memristor-based TCAM architecture built upon the voltage divider principle for energy efficient match-action processing. Moreover, we have tested the performance of the memristor-based TCAM architecture using the experimental data of a novel Nb-doped SrTiO3 memristor. Energy analysis of the proposed TCAM architecture for given memristor shows promising power consumption statistics of 16 μW for a match operation and 1 μW for a mismatch operation.