ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY

PURPOSE:To eliminate the necessity of comparison and judgement outside of a device and to facilitate controlling of the device by providing a register that corresponds to each field of each word and controlling whether corresponding field is to be made an object of retrieval depending on the value held in the register. CONSTITUTION:From 1-4 are associative memory cell arrays, and 1,2 constitute word 1 and 3, 4 constitute word (m). The result of retrieval of each field of each word is outputted to a line 7, and in case of coincidence 1 is outputted to the line 7 and in case of discordance 0 is outputted to the line 7 according to given retrieved data. 9 is an output line of specific bit of memory data that controls whether each field of each word is to be made an object of retrieval or not, and when the value of specific bit is 1, output of OR gate becomes 1 irrespective of the value of result of retrieval line 7, and it is not made the object of retrieval. When the line 9 is 0, the output of OR gate 10 is made equal to the result of retrieval line 7, and the field becomes the object of retrieval. Similarly, it is possible to control separately whether each associative memory cell arrays 1-4 are to be made the object of retrieval or not by specific bit of memory data.