The Impact of Device Technologies on the Design of Non-Volatile Content Addressable Memories

Content Addressable Memories (CAMs) are employed in the design of computing-in-memory (CiM) accelerators for data-intensive applications due to their ability to perform massively parallel searches. This paper presents a study of different device technologies, i.e., resistive RAMs (ReRAMs), ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs), and magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAMs) that are leveraged in the development of dense and energy-efficient non-volatile content addressable memories (NVCAMs). We leverage data from our own research and that of others to present a comprehensive evaluation of different NVCAMs and compare their power consumption, area efficiency, speed, and endurance with respect to CMOS-based CAM counterparts. Additionally, we explore potential application scenarios that map to the unique strengths of the various NVCAMs. Our discussion highlights pathways for future research on the application mapping of NVCAM designs for CiM architectures.