• Renesas Electronics Corporation has announced the development of a configurable ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) implemented using a 3 nm FinFET manufacturing process. • The new design combines increased storage density, reduced power consumption, and enhanced functional safety, positioning it for use in automotive environments. • The company presented its results at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2026, held February 15-19 in San Francisco, California. • As 5G deployments expand and cloud and edge computing workloads grow, network traffic volumes continue to rise, creating demand for larger and more flexible TCAM configurations, such as arrays with 256-bit keys and 4,096 entries. • Traditional scaling approaches that depend only on hard macros tend to increase peripheral circuitry because of additional banks and repeaters, complicate timing closure, and raise search energy. • In automotive systems, these challenges are compounded by the need to meet stringent safety standards, including ISO 26262 requirements.
Article Summaries:
- Renesas Electronics announced a new configurable ternary content‑addressable memory (TCAM) built on a 3 nm FinFET process. The design blends hard‑macro and soft‑macro elements, allowing key widths of 8-64 bits and entry depths of 32-128, with larger arrays (e.g., 256‑bit keys × 4,096 entries) assembled from multiple hard macros. It achieves a density of 5.27 Mb/mm², a 1.7 GHz search clock, and a figure of merit of 53.8, surpassing prior TCAMs. Energy savings up to 71 % are realized through two‑stage pipelined search and key partitioning. Safety features for automotive use include split data buses, dedicated ECC parity storage, and enhanced fault detection to meet ISO 26262 requirements. The results were presented at the 2026 International Solid‑State Circuits Conference.
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