A 20T4M High-Reliability TCAM with High-Temperature-Tolerant Match Line

Magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) nanopillar based ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) has great potential in numerous applications, owing to its non-volatility and high speed. However, low tunnel magnetoresistive ratio of MTJ causes reliability issue for data searching. Besides, high temperature in the manufacturing process will also greatly reduce the stability of the match line. In order to address these issues, we propose a 20T4M TCAM structure, which can maintain high reliability at a high temperature. Simulation results obtained by utilizing the CMOS 28 nm design kit demonstrate that the proposed TCAM structure can achieve reliable search operations at 85° C. Compared to traditional TCAM structure, the search error rate is greatly reduced.