Ask HN: Is the ternary computer used in products?

Posted by 8ed30dc on Saturday January 22, 2022 @06:45AM
from the ask-hn dept.

I saw an introduction to ternary computers on Wikipedia, and I'm curious which areas actually use ternary computers? And why are ternary computers better than binary computers in efficiency?

Because the wiki's instructions lack more detailed instructions, does anyone know a more complete introduction?

( 3 comments | 4 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Is the ternary computer used in products? by wexq on Saturday January 22, 2022 @08:09AM (#30036316)

To my knowledge the only recent project using ternary was the cryptocurrency/token IOTA, but even they dropped it.

I don't think there would be any gain from ternary unless the hardware was using trits as well. But all of our computing hardware is binary at the moment.

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Re:Ask HN: Is the ternary computer used in products? by compressedgas on Saturday January 22, 2022 @06:48AM (#30035867)

No one uses ternary now. There is no advantage in doing so.

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Re:Ask HN: Is the ternary computer used in products? by compressedgas on Saturday January 22, 2022 @09:08PM (#30042961)

The main reason is that binary logic is so much more effective than logic using more than level at the transistor circuit level.

There are alternative number systems that are in use but those are implementations of different kinds of numbers or numbers with different internal structure.

Such as the redundant number system which have parallel addition and multiplication that does not have long serial paths that the normal operations have. This means it does addition in less than log n time.

The ternary numbers are functionally equivalent to binary only differing in representation but not any other aspect so they provide no advantage.

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