  As a promising alternative to the Von Neumann architecture, in-memory
computing holds the promise of delivering high computing capacity while
consuming low power. Content addressable memory (CAM) can implement pattern
matching and distance measurement in memory with massive parallelism, making
them highly desirable for data-intensive applications. In this paper, we
propose and demonstrate a novel 1-transistor-per-bit CAM based on the
ferroelectric reconfigurable transistor. By exploiting the switchable polarity
of the ferroelectric reconfigurable transistor, XOR/XNOR-like matching
operation in CAM can be realized in a single transistor. By eliminating the
need for the complementary circuit, these non-volatile CAMs based on
reconfigurable transistors can offer a significant improvement in area and
energy efficiency compared to conventional CAMs. NAND- and NOR-arrays of CAMs
are also demonstrated, which enable multi-bit matching in a single reading
operation. In addition, the NOR array of CAM cells effectively measures the
Hamming distance between the input query and stored entries. Furthermore,
utilizing the switchable polarity of these ferroelectric Schottky barrier
transistors, we demonstrate reconfigurable logic gates with NAND/NOR dual
functions, whose input-output mapping can be transformed in real-time without
changing the layout. These reconfigurable circuits will serve as important
building blocks for high-density data-stream processors and reconfigurable
Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (r-ASICs). The CAMs and transformable
logic gates based on ferroelectric reconfigurable transistors will have broad
applications in data-intensive applications from image processing to machine
learning and artificial intelligence.
