Abstract: A hardware accelerator for managing a computer database. The accelerator includes a key memory for storing a map of record key values to record address values, a search processor for searching the key memory for a given key value and providing the associated record address value to the central processor, and a bus interface for interfacing the search processor and the key memory to the central processor. Database management software executing on the central processor requests a mapping from key values to record address values by issuing requests over the bus interface to the search processor. The accelerator also provides operations to add and delete entries in the key memory. The accelerator uses a modified binary search that is particularly useful for searching a memory in which the search values of the entries are not unique; the modified binary search finds the first entry in the memory matching a given value.