ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY FOR VERY LARGE KEY SPACES

To provide for fast access times with very large key fields, an associative memory utilizes a location addressable memory and look up tables to generate from a key an address in memory storing an associated record. The look up tables, stored in a memory, are constructed with the aid of arithmetic data compression methods to create a near perfect hashing of the keys. For encoding into the look up table, keys are divided into a string of symbols. Each symbol is assigned an index value, such that a sum of index values for symbols of a particular key is a unique value that is used as an address to the memory storing the record associated with that key.