An efficient pattern match architecture for production systems using content-addressable memory

A novel and efficient content-addressable pattern match architecture (CAPMA) is proposed to speed up the execution time of the match process of a production system. CAPMA compiles the left-hand side (LHS) of each production into an efficient symbolic form, and creates an effective symbolic accessing mechanism based on a two-level content-addressable memory (CAM) structure for computing the conflict set. Preliminary (performance estimation) shows that averaging 2500 match clocks of CAM are needed for each match cycle. That is, CAPMA can perform approximately 8000 match cycles per second using 20 MHz CAMs.<>