A GPS receiver having a fast time to lock to a GPS signal by storing a time period of an incoming GPS signal in a signal memory and rapidly comparing the signal memory against locations in a replica memory having stored GPS signal replicas. The GPS receiver includes a memory-based search engine for acquiring the GPS signal so that it may be tracked. The memory-based search engine includes a signal memory for storing a millisecond of a digitized GPS signal, a replica memory section for storing replicas representative of the digitized GPS signal for all possible frequency differences between the GPS carrier frequency and a local reference frequency and phase offsets between the GPS code phase and a local reference time, and a GPS memory comparator for comparing the stored signal in signal memory to the stored replicas in replica memory and issuing an acquisition detection signal when the level of the comparison is greater than a selected threshold.