Abstract
Functional tests for content-addressable memories (CAMs) are presented in this paper. The fault models considered are based on physical defects. In order to make our approach suited to various application specific CAMs, we propose tests which require only three fundamental types of operation, and the test results can be observed entirely from the single-bit match/hit output. A complete, compact test is also proposed, which has reasonable test length for modern high-density and large-capacity CAMs.