The present invention provides a power efficient content-addressable memory (CAM) architecture that is implementable on FPGAs. The provided CAM architecture comprises an array of CAM cells having a width CW and a depth CD, and being grouped into a B number of memory banks. Each of the CAM cells is configured for storing a memory bit and comprises a plurality of flip-flops configured to store at least a masking bit indicating the ternary nature of the stored memory bit and a storing bit saving the binary information of the stored memory bit. The provided CAM architecture allows activating only one bank in multiple banks irrespective of nature of the data set and is updated in a single access and saves power consumption by only accessing the memory in the activated bank. The dynamic power consumption is reduced by 40% compared with the state-of-the-art FPGA-based CAMs.