Patent 7558095 was granted and assigned to Agere Systems on July, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A memory cell for use in a content-addressable memory comprises a first latch and a second latch. The first latch is operative to store a first bit associated with a first stored word, while the second latch is operative to store a second bit associated with a second stored word. The first and second latches collectively comprise a plurality of latch transistors. Each of the latch transistors comprises a respective channel. The channels of the latch transistors are oriented in substantially the same direction, resulting in a very compact memory cell implementation.