To address the low matching rate of flow table, an intelligent update method for flow table in Software Defined Network (SDN) switch was proposed. First, the impact of timeout value on the packet matching was described, besides, the shortcomings of First In First Out (FIFO), Least Recently Used (LRU) and other common methods were analyzed and compared. Secondly, based on the reality of survival time of the flow entry related closely to the characteristics of data flow, the Hidden Markov Model (HMM)-based Deep Flow Inspection (DFI) technology was used to classify the data flow. Finally, according to the condition of the flow table resources and controller's computing resources, the intelligent update of the flow entry of different type of data flow was realized. The simulation experiments conducted on data center behavior data of real campus indicate that the proposed method can improve more than 5% of the matching rate compared with the common methods, and it has a practical significance to the management of the SDN switch.