An arbitration tree adapted to object oriented associative memories

The arbitrator device, or priority encoder, is necessary in associative memories because it enables to select one processing element among N by using a single instruction concerning all the data. It is a way to solve the problem of addressing a particular processor unit without an identification device. We first describe the solutions usually applied in associative memories. The binary arbitration tree reads the state of a flag in each processor and indicates which of them is the first set according to an order. We detail an improvement adapted to the architecture we are developing: an object-oriented paginated set-associative memory. This new arbitrator performs in parallel multiple sub-arbitrations within domains of consecutive elements. It allows parallel processing over arbitrary length data stored in the memory, and still has a modular and tree-like design suitable for VLSI implementation