Content Addressable Memory (CAM) 714

Content Addressable Memory (CAM)
CAM is not unique to Cisco, but is almost an industry-standard mechanism for how the lookup
process for data operates in modern devices. CAM is not the same as a traditional indexing
method. These older mechanisms use a pointer to identify the location in memory of specific
information (such as an address/port match).
With CAM, a precise relationship exists between the information in the data and its location
in the data store. This means that all data with similar characteristics will be found close
Fabric Interlaces
Line Cards
The Switching Process
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together in the store. CAM could therefore be defined as any kind of storage device that
includes some comparison logic with each bit of data stored.
CAM is sometimes called
associative memory
.