Fast Search Algorithms for Associative Memories

Abstract

A new scheme for constructing search algorithms for bit-parallel associative memories of m n-bit words is described. The resulting equivalence searches, threshold searches, and double-limit searches achieve the time bound of O(log n), compared to O(n), the recent result of Ramamoorthy et al. [12]. The extremum search algorithm by Frei and Goldberg [2] is modified and generalized so that the number of memory interrogations is reduced by 30 percent over the initial algorithm in the average case.