Motorola Corporation

Terry Van Hulett

Jesse R Wilson

Ralph C McGarity

A content addressable memory (CAM) comprising a plurality of CAM cells, each including a static read/write memory (RWM) cell and an EXCLUSIVE OR (XOR) gate which couples a sense line to a ground line only if the logic state of the operand bit stored in the RWM cell does not match the logic state of an operand bit presented to the CAM cell. By arranging a selected subset of the CAM cells so that the XOR gates thereof act upon a first portion of either the sense line or the ground line while the balance of the CAM cells are arranged so that the XOR gates thereof act upon a second portion of that same line, a single coupler interposed between the first and second portions can be selectively disabled by a mask signal to simultaneously mask all of the bits stored in the subset of CAM cells during the matching operation of the CAM. If appropriate, the mask signal may comprise the bit stored in a particular one of the CAM cells.

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San Antonio, TX, United States of America

Terry Van Hulett