A search unit including a distributor TCAM and a DRAM search unit and a method to divide a database of TCAM rules is disclosed. The method includes selecting a rule having multiple “don't care” values and selecting a bit of the rule having a “don't care” value, generating two distributor rules based on the selected rule, associating rules of the database which match each of the distributor rules with the distributor rule they match to create subset databases, and repeating the steps of selecting, generating and associating until the average number of rules in each subset database is at or below a predefined amount. A DRAM storage unit has a section for each subset database, where each section is pointed to by a different distributor rule. A DRAM search unit matches an input key to one of the rules in the section pointed to by the matched distributor rule.