An Optical Content Addressable Memory Cell for Address Look-Up at 10 Gb/s

We propose and experimentally demonstrate the first all-optical content addressable memory (CAM) cell that comprises an all-optical monolithically integrated InP flip-flop and an optical XOR gate. The experimental results reveal error-free operation at 10 Gb/s for both content addressing and content writing operations. The potential of these memory architectures to allow for up to 40-Gb/s operation could presumably lead to fast CAM-based routing applications by enabling all-optical address look-up schemes.