A content-addressable memory compares an input search word against all rows of stored words in an array in a highly parallel manner. While supplying a very powerful functionality for many applications in pattern matching and search, it suffers from large area, cost and power consumption, limiting its use. Past improvements have been realized by using memristors to replace the static random-access memory cell in conventional designs, but employ similar schemes based only on binary or ternary states for storage and search. We propose a new analog content-addressable memory concept and circuit to overcome these limitations by utilizing the analog conductance tunability of memristors. Our analog content-addressable memory stores data within the programmable conductance and can take as input either analog or digital search values. Experimental demonstrations, scaled simulations and analysis show that our analog content-addressable memory can reduce area and power consumption, which enables the acceleration of existing applications, but also new computing application areas.

内容可寻址存储器以高度并行的方式将输入搜索词与数组中存储的词的所有行进行比较。尽管在模式匹配和搜索中为许多应用程序提供了非常强大的功能，但其面积大，成本高，功耗低，限制了其使用。在常规设计中，通过使用忆阻器代替静态随机存取存储单元已经实现了过去的改进，但是仅采用基于二进制或三态的相似方案进行存储和搜索。我们提出了一种新的模拟内容可寻址存储器概念和电路，以通过利用忆阻器的模拟电导可调性来克服这些限制。我们的模拟内容可寻址存储器将数据存储在可编程电导中，并且可以将模拟或数字搜索值用作输入。