Exploration and evaluation of TCAM with hybrid tunneling FET and FinFET devices for ultra-low-voltage applications

In this paper, we investigate the hybrid TFET-FinFET implementation of ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) and compare the search time, power and energy with all FinFET and all TFET implementations in near-threshold region using atomistic 3D TCAD mixed-mode simulations for transistor characteristics and HSPICE circuit simulations with look-up table based Verilog-A models calibrated with TCAD simulation results. The TCAM utilizes a don't-care-based ripple search line (SL) to improve the search performance and power. In the hybrid design, TFETs are used for comparison circuit to improve the performance and energy of serially connected match line (ML) at low voltage, while FinFETs are used for the rest of the circuit for better cell stability, switching power and leakage power.