Associative memory architecture

Claim 1

An associative memory allowing for the comparison of search data with a multiplicity of data stored in at least one data register and available at the outpupts of said data register, comprising: Comparison means (1, 3, 5, and 7) with inputs connected to the outputs of the data register for processsing the search data and comparing the search data with the stored data, these comparison means supplying result data at no less than one output, said comparison means including a masking unit, a preprocessing unit, and a memory map, said preprocessing unit generating, on the basis of the search data, comparison data to execute a plurality of comparison functions in the memory map, said masking unit being connected to an output of the preprocessing unit and to an input of the memory map and being operable to mask at least one part of a word of a comparison datum so that the unmasked part of the word is compared, in the memory map, with the corresponding parts of the words of the stored data; Manipulation means with at least one input connected to the output of the comparison means for processing the result data obtained after comparison of the search data with the stored data; A control unit (21) to control information exchanges between the comparison means and the manipulation means, wherein the manipulation means include a processing unit for variable-length word associations (13), each search datum and stored datum, including a word or an association of variable length words.