What Is Ternary-Content-Addressable-Memory-TCAM?

Ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) is like a third eye on your computer. It can see the world in all its multi-dimensional glory and make decisions based on what it sees. The best cache for your brain. Ternary content-addressable memory, or TCAM, is a type of CAM that holds the same data as regular CAMs but always outputs the exact query result back. It is perfect for storing MAC addresses because they have specific lengths and only output one matching result when queried. It makes TCAM faster than RAM because it can search through data more quickly and in parallel. A ternary CAM is more versatile than a binary CAM. How? It has an X in the middle of its binary search. Ternary search makes it possible to search data by matching two or more values rather than just one. If you need to find all the IP addresses between 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.255, you could use regular binary CAM, but it would require searching one by one for each IP address separately; However, if you use a ternary CAM, you can explore all those IP addresses at once! Ternary CAM is best for finding things quickly, like an old friend or a lost dog. A ternary CAM allows you to search any field of possibilities simultaneously, unlike regular CAM, which only searches one bit at a time. With this flexibility and speed, ternary CAM is ideal for exploring multiple fields within an ACL list. TCAM or ternary content-addressable memory, is the next big thing in computer chip design. It has the potential to outperform MCDRAM and other conventional memory solutions by a large margin. Despite its benefits, TCAM is rarely used in the electronics industry because it is expensive to build and consumes a lot of power, which is then transformed into heat, resulting in additional power requirements for cooling.