SIGNATURE SEARCH ARCHITECTURE FOR PROGRAMMABLE INTELLIGENT SEARCH MEMORY

Memory architecture provides capabilities for high performance content search. The architecture creates an innovative memory that can be programmed with content search rules which are used by the memory to evaluate presented content for matching with the programmed rules. Content search rules include of regular expressions which are compiled to finite state automata (FSA) and further include of patterns of strings a first set of which are compiled to a compressed signature database and a second set of which are compiled into FSAs. The finite state automata are then programmed in Programmable Intelligent Search Memory (PRISM) programmable FSA rule blocks and the compressed signature database is programmed in the PRISM signature search engines for evaluating content with the content search rules. A compiler compiles the content search rules for evaluation by PRISM memory. When the content being searched matches any of the rules programmed in the Programmable Intelligent Search Memory (PRISM), action(s) associated with the matched rule(s) are taken.