Content Addressable Memorys (CAM’s) in their most trivial form, work in a way opposite to conventional memories. While a random access memory (RAM) returns data upon providing the address, a CAM provides address when data is supplied. So effectively a CAM is a search tool that looks for the data in question within its data base.
CAM’s commonly work as hardware search engines in routers and switches to accelerate forwarding of packets on the destination route. We will talk about the various other applications that consider a CAM as an important processing engine as we proceed engine as we proceed in this article.
As indicated in its definition, CAM holds the address to be looked up for and returns the route associated information to the host processor to perform the successive tasks of forwarding the incoming packet. So we can also define a CAM as a network coprocessor to the central processor.
Note that TCP/IP and /or OSI models are taken here as reference to explain the concepts similar analogies may be drawn with other protocols like IPX/SPX, Apple Talk and UDP.
CAM’s : Memories Faster then RAM’s
Content Addressable Memorys (CAM’s) in their most trivial form, work in a way opposite to conventional memories. While a random access memory (RAM) returns data upon providing the address, a CAM provides address when data is supplied. So effectively a CAM is a search tool that looks for the data in question within its data base.
CAM’s commonly work as hardware search engines in routers and switches to accelerate forwarding of packets on the destination route. We will talk about the various other applications that consider a CAM as an important processing engine as we proceed engine as we proceed in this article.
As indicated in its definition, CAM holds the address to be looked up for and returns the route associated information to the host processor to perform the successive tasks of forwarding the incoming packet. So we can also define a CAM as a network coprocessor to the central processor.
Note that TCP/IP and /or OSI models are taken here as reference to explain the concepts similar analogies may be drawn with other protocols like IPX/SPX, Apple Talk and UDP.