Cisco Technology, Inc.

Sivan Avraham

Doron Shoham

Aravinth Nagamani Manickam

In one embodiment, a content-addressable memory has multiple blocks of content-addressable memory entries, including different first and second sets of content-addressable memory blocks. One embodiment determines the first set of content-addressable memory blocks based on a content-addressable memory profile identifier and a search key and then performs a first content-addressable memory lookup operation in each of the first set of content-addressable memory blocks, but not in the second set of content-addressable memory blocks, based on the search key. If at least one entry is match, a corresponding result is identified. Otherwise, in one embodiment, the second set of content-addressable memory blocks is determined based on the content-addressable memory profile identifier but not based on the search key, and a search is made therein to identify a matching result or that no match was determined. In one embodiment, a matching result determines how a packet is processed.

Searching varying selectable physical blocks of entries within a content-addressable memory

In one embodiment, packets are forwarded in a network based on lookup results in a content-addressable memory that includes multiple blocks of content-addressable memory entries, with the relative priority of these blocks typically determined on a per search basis. In one embodiment, the content-addressable memory blocks perform lookup operations based on a search key resulting in a lookup results. The result determiner determines an overall highest-priority content-addressable memory lookup result based on ordering the lookup results according to a dynamic priority ordering (e.g., retrieved from storage) among the content-addressable memory blocks. One embodiment allows multiple searches to occur simultaneously among the content-addressable memory blocks by selectively performing lookup operations on multiple search keys. One embodiment weights such lookup operations to initially assign search keys to content-addressable memory block(s) with a corresponding higher-priority, and if a match is found, other content-addressable memory block(s) will not need to be searched.

Growing community of inventors

Hadera, Israel

Sivan Avraham