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The superiority of ternary computers?

excreationist

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Probably in a simulation
Some advantages:

Note the focus here is on "balanced ternary" which has the values of -1, 0, 1.



It talks about the Soviets making a ternary computer in 1958 called Setun.

6:30 Nikolay Brusentsov, director of the Setun project said: "Ternary threshold logic elements as compared with the binary ones provide more speed and reliability, require less equipment and power. These where reasons to design a ternary computer".

7:23 "ternary is reappearing is artificial intelligence"
7:38 "where ternary neural networks come in"
7:40 "instead of using floating point nubmers for every weight in the neural network a ternary model retricts each weight to just three values: -1, 0, +1"
7:52 "this means that multiplication, one of the most computationally expensive operations, can be eliminated entirely in many cases"
7:59 "in turn, the memory usage drops dramatically and energy efficiency skyrockets"
8:03 "in practice, ternary neural networks can reduce energy consumption by over three times in comparison to traditional approaches"
8:11 "while still achieving similar results on image recognition and other tasks"
8:14 "this makes them ideal for running AI models on low powered devices such as wearables and drones, without sacrificing performance"
8:24 "for decades the biggest roadblock to ternary adapation was the hardware"
8:31 "recently researchers have successfully produced ternary chips using standard CMOS manufacturing, the very same method that is used for producing binary chips"
8:40 "one breakthrough design coming from South Korea called T-CMOS uses quantum tunneling to introduce a third logic state without the need for multiple voltage thresholds"
8:49 "this means ternary logic can now be produced at scale using existing industrial infrastructure while consuming less power and maintaining signal stability"

I guess binary is a lot easier to master though. Maybe instead of binary trees you could have ternary trees, etc.
 
Maybe instead of binary trees you could have ternary trees, etc.
You can do that with binary computers. Your choice of m in your m-ary tree depends on what you're trying to do with the data structure.
I mean it could be handled in one "trit". I think it would take 2 bits to do on a binary computer...
 
I like the metaphysics of balanced ternary - it is like our emotions - positive (reward), negative (punishment) or neutral...

Also binary is black and white ... ternary is shades of grey...
 
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Maybe instead of binary trees you could have ternary trees, etc.
You can do that with binary computers. Your choice of m in your m-ary tree depends on what you're trying to do with the data structure.
I mean it could be handled in one "trit". I think it would take 2 bits to do on a binary computer...
I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but it isn't binary and ternary trees.
Yeah I don't really know what ternary trees are all about. Unless it involves less than, equal to, and greater than in a single operation.
 
This webpage for ternary CPUs talks about many of the benefits:
So balanced ternary is -1, 0, +1. That webpage shows how these are represented in "short form":
+-0
e.g.
+-00++---000--++
That's quite elegant... also those 3 symbols are next to each other on my keyboard...

That page links to this article about ternary computer logic:
 
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Not a good idea.

The world isn't perfect. Let's pretend a 1 is 1 volt, a 0 is ground. Clearly a 1 volt is on. But circuits aren't perfect, there's always noise. When you get .9 volts what do you do? Round it up to 1 volt. The more room you have between valid states the more noise you can tolerate before the signal gets corrupted. A ternary system halves the distance between valid states and thus halves the noise tolerance, but for only a 50% gain in processing per operation even if you could make perfect use of the third state. You just lost a quarter of your processing power (or transmission rate if you're talking about a cable.)
 
@Loren Pechtel
That’s not true anymore see:

8:40 "one breakthrough design coming from South Korea called T-CMOS uses quantum tunneling to introduce a third logic state without the need for multiple voltage thresholds"

Also from Wikipedia:
A ternary computer using fiber optics could use dark as 0 and two orthogonal polarizations of light as +1 and −1
 
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@Loren Pechtel
From a website about an existing ternary CPU:
Lower Power Consumption
Ternary gates reduces switching activity, leading to lower heat generation and improved energy efficiency.
business

Higher Information Density
Ternary digits (trits) has a higher information density, leading to more compact data.

Optimized for AI & ML
Ternary logic aligns closely with neural network weight representation, leading to more efficient AI and ML models.
 
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