An improved architecture for a network search engine (NSE) is disclosed
herein as including an interface manager, one or more levels of a
splitting engine, an array of data processing units (DPUs), and a cascade
block. A method for using the improved NSE architecture to form an
efficient pointer entry database is also provided. As described herein,
the improved NSE architecture simultaneously provides high speed, search
throughput, update rate and capacity, coupled with low power and fixed
latency searches for all search key widths.