High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routers

Ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) is widely used in the design of high-speed search engines such as network routers and artificial-intelligence-based applications. However, traditional TCAM designs suffer from two major drawbacks. Static random access memory (RAM)-based TCAMs do one operatio...

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Main Authors: Sridhar Raj Sankara Vadivel, Shantha Selvakumari Ramapackiam
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) 2025-06-01
Series:ETRI Journal
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.4218/etrij.2023-0206
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author Sridhar Raj Sankara Vadivel
Shantha Selvakumari Ramapackiam
author_facet Sridhar Raj Sankara Vadivel
Shantha Selvakumari Ramapackiam
author_sort Sridhar Raj Sankara Vadivel
collection DOAJ
description Ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) is widely used in the design of high-speed search engines such as network routers and artificial-intelligence-based applications. However, traditional TCAM designs suffer from two major drawbacks. Static random access memory (RAM)-based TCAMs do one operation at a time, causing the search operation to be sus-pended while the update operation is in progress, rendering them unsuitable for applications with high-frequency updates. Moreover, during the implemen-tation of wider TCAMs, when the match results are transferred from one slice to another, the last look-up table (LUT) in the slice is always set to logic one, which results in resource wastages. This research aims to overcome the prob-lems associated with traditional TCAM design. The proposed work used six-input (RAM64X1S) LUTs in field-programmable gate arrays by allowing both search and update operations to be performed simultaneously during the data update in a particular LUT. To overcome resource wastage, the proposed design used four RAM64X1S blocks instead of RAM64M blocks. Moreover, the proposed TCAM architecture was considerably simpler, comprising LUTs with AND slicing, thus reducing FPGA resources such as slice registers and slice logic. For TCAM sizes of 512 × 36 and 1024 × 144, the slice utilization was reduced by 17% and 29%, respectively, with their speed being increased by 17% and 26%, respectively. Moreover, the lookup rate and the update rate of the designed TCAMs also improved considerably. The proposed architecture employed high-speed single-cycle searches, making it ideal for fast search applications.
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spelling doaj-art-534a119a4ce84c34bd2ef067a85df6d92025-08-20T03:14:50ZengElectronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)ETRI Journal1225-64632233-73262025-06-0147350551710.4218/etrij.2023-0206High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routersSridhar Raj Sankara VadivelShantha Selvakumari RamapackiamTernary content-addressable memory (TCAM) is widely used in the design of high-speed search engines such as network routers and artificial-intelligence-based applications. However, traditional TCAM designs suffer from two major drawbacks. Static random access memory (RAM)-based TCAMs do one operation at a time, causing the search operation to be sus-pended while the update operation is in progress, rendering them unsuitable for applications with high-frequency updates. Moreover, during the implemen-tation of wider TCAMs, when the match results are transferred from one slice to another, the last look-up table (LUT) in the slice is always set to logic one, which results in resource wastages. This research aims to overcome the prob-lems associated with traditional TCAM design. The proposed work used six-input (RAM64X1S) LUTs in field-programmable gate arrays by allowing both search and update operations to be performed simultaneously during the data update in a particular LUT. To overcome resource wastage, the proposed design used four RAM64X1S blocks instead of RAM64M blocks. Moreover, the proposed TCAM architecture was considerably simpler, comprising LUTs with AND slicing, thus reducing FPGA resources such as slice registers and slice logic. For TCAM sizes of 512 × 36 and 1024 × 144, the slice utilization was reduced by 17% and 29%, respectively, with their speed being increased by 17% and 26%, respectively. Moreover, the lookup rate and the update rate of the designed TCAMs also improved considerably. The proposed architecture employed high-speed single-cycle searches, making it ideal for fast search applications. https://doi.org/10.4218/etrij.2023-0206data compressionfield-programmable gate arrayroutersstatic random-access memoryternary content-addressable memorytranslation lookaside buffers
spellingShingle Sridhar Raj Sankara Vadivel
Shantha Selvakumari Ramapackiam
High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routers
ETRI Journal
data compression
field-programmable gate array
routers
static random-access memory
ternary content-addressable memory
translation lookaside buffers
title High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routers
title_full High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routers
title_fullStr High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routers
title_full_unstemmed High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routers
title_short High-speed and reduced energy delay product TCAM on FPGA for network routers
title_sort high speed and reduced energy delay product tcam on fpga for network routers
topic data compression
field-programmable gate array
routers
static random-access memory
ternary content-addressable memory
translation lookaside buffers
url https://doi.org/10.4218/etrij.2023-0206
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