Patent attributes
The present invention provides a semiconductor device that can reduce the power consumption. The semiconductor device includes a plurality of sub-blocks each including a memory cell array, and a plurality of sub-search units corresponding to the respective sub-blocks. Of the data stored in each row of the memory cell array, each sub-block searches for data that matches the input search data according to a search instruction, and outputs a search result indicating hit or miss for each row. Each sub-search unit includes a flag data generation part that generates flag data for presearch to compare with part of the input search data based on the data stored in the corresponding memory cell array, and a search part that compares part of the input search data with the flag data generated by the flag data generation part, and outputs the search instruction to the corresponding sub-block based on the comparison result.
