Ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) is a type of associative memory used in many applications for high-speed data searching. We present herein a gate-all-around (GAA) carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET)-based self-controlled TCAM cell design with a precharge-free match line. We compare the power–delay product (PDP) and static noise margin between the GAA-CNTFET-based traditional and proposed TCAM cell designs at the 11-nm technology node with a supply voltage of 0.8 V. The simulations are performed using the Virtuoso tool for different parameter values with the Stanford University GAA-CNTFET model. The simulation results show that, compared with the traditional design, the proposed design exhibits a significant reduction in power by 51.30%, delay by 17.16%, and PDP by 59.66% for a chiral vector of (20, 16, 0) with two channels. It is observed that the best chirality for the proposed design is (14, 20, 0) for a single channel, but (16, 16, 0) and (20, 16, 0) for a dual channel in terms of power, delay, stability, and PDP. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.