Technologies for classification using sparse coding are disclosed. A compute device may include a pattern-matching accelerator, which may be able to determine the distance between an input vector (such as an image) and several basis vectors of an overcomplete dictionary stored in the pattern-matching accelerator. The pattern matching accelerator may be able to determine each of the distances simultaneously and in a fixed amount of time (i.e., with no dependence on the number of basis vectors to which the input vector is being compared). The pattern-matching accelerator may be used to determine a set of sparse coding coefficients corresponding to a subset of the overcomplete basis vectors. The sparse coding coefficients can then be used to classify the input vector.