Abstract.A two-step digit-set-restricted modified signed-digit ͑MSD͒ adder based on symbolic substitution is presented. In the proposed addition algorithm, carry propagation is avoided by using reference digits to restrict the intermediate MSD carry and sum digits into ͕1 ,0͖ and ͕0,1͖, respectively. The algorithm requires only 12 minterms to generate the final results, and no complementarity operations for nonzero outputs are involved, which simplifies the system complexity significantly. An optoelectronic shared content-addressable memory based on an incoherent correlator is used for experimental demonstration.