All-optical 10Gb/s ternary-CAM cell for routing look-up table applications

We experimentally demonstrate the first all-optical Ternary-Content Addressable Memory (T-CAM) cell that operates at 10Gb/s and comprises two monolithically integrated InP Flip-Flops (FF) and a SOA-MZI optical XOR gate. The two FFs are responsible for storing the data bit and the ternary state 'X', respectively, with the XOR gate used for comparing the stored FF-data and the search bit. The experimental results reveal error-free operation at 10Gb/s for both Write and Ternary Content Addressing of the T-CAM cell, indicating that the proposed optical T-CAM cell could in principle lead to all-optical T-CAM-based Address Look-up memory architectures for high-end routing applications.