Uhhh....where IS everyeone?

[drumnbach]

What about the logic system? Flip-flap-flop. Sure it better represents human thinking, but do we really want our computers to be equipped with a more human logic? We should keep things in binary purely because I'd rather farm a meadow of high-towers than have a cluster of high-towers who have cooperatively manifested themselves as a giant humanoid farm a meadow of drumnbachs.

One particularly powerful ternary supercomputer would elect himself president of the new cyber-republic. A diabolical face would radiate from his giant VDU, and he would bellow the ternary manifesto from his three-thousand and thirty-three watt speakers. Beneath him would be the relics of the subordinate binary world. An archaic, Star Trek-esque control panel, complete with nixie tube lights to display anything quantafiable. A wall of MDF panels with 80Mb hard drives screwed on to them. 386 processors sticking out of plant pots.

And deep underground would be a giant converted 1980's nuclear power plant. This is where the farmed human brains are reconstituted as an energy source, and to feed the computer emperor's burgeoning intelligence. The conveyor belt trundles along, carting the brains off into the mouth of a converted JCB digger. The conveyor belt is just about the only binary driven technology in the entire place, and this is to our fortune, because it did not detect that Ahribar's brain had been thrown on the belt along with millions of others.

Ahribar's brain ends up in the mouth of the JCB digger. The needle of an analogue moving-coil meter pproaches the red end of the scale marked 'Overload' and it starts to quiver. The nuclear power plant explodes, and the ternary dynasty is overthrown.

And you know why? Because the relics of our subordinate digital world saved the day. Maybe ternary is more efficient, but there are other costs involved, including our LIVES!

Think about that.

[drumnbach]

'Setun 70' would be the Jesus / Muhammed of the new ternary-tyrany.

[Timballisto]

Okay...normally,  I NEVER, EVER, say this, but, now I believe I have found the perfect time to...


[size=20]WTF?[/size]

That entire rant up there is INSANE NONSENSE BASED ON NOTHING.  WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???

[Conway]

Drumnbach, you should write science fiction! That's incredible, literally!

  The idea of a three-way bit, or 'trit', as they may be called, has crossed my mind. I have no idea how a hard drive works, but I'm sure it would be possible to make one with three possible states to every bit, and then design a new breed of processor to go with it. Maybe it's just because such a system would be unnecessary, and would probably be completely incompatible with any hardware or software built on the binary system.

  In fact, if a bit works similarly to a lightbulb, or a magnetic field, it can be switched on or off, and also charged to different degrees, so we could have a virtually unlimited base unit for a bit; 3, 5, 10, 20, the options are countless. 10 would probably be the simplest, because it's used primarily in mathematics.

  It's an interesting thought though!

[drumnbach]

There have been at least two ternary computers built (and several more of the same were produced). They were designed at a Moscow university in the '50s, '60s and [70s and they were named 'Setun' and 'Setun 70'.

Apparently they were more practical and efficient than binary computers. Unfortunately, the Russian government couldn\t be arsed to fund the Moscow University and instead propagated the idea that ternary was bad. Eventually production of ternary computers stopped, despite them being in high demand.

[Shvegait]

It all boils down to simplicity. Simplicity works best.

A ternary system can be built with a binary system using 2 bits for each "trit". (This doesn't address memory or processing concerns, just logic.)

1 1 : State 1
1 0 : State 2
0 1 : State 2
0 0 : State 3

If (A and B) then 1,
else if (A or B) then 2,
else 3.

drumnbach, how could a purely ternary system be more practical (I won't ask about efficient, because in certain specific cases a ternary system could probably be more efficient) than a binary system... especially considering the advances in technology we've made over the past decades? Examples would be nice...

And does ternary really fit human thinking patterns? I'm not so certain. Everything gets boiled down to two main categories (black vs. white, cold vs. hot, etc.). Now, you could say there exist concepts of "gray" and "warm", but is it a unique state? No, it is a mixture of two other states.

Logic flows much much easier from a binary system than a ternary system anyway.

I'm not going to say human thinking can be modeled by a binary system, but really it wouldn't be easier to model with a ternary system. The only potential difference between a binary and ternary system deals with efficiency (since a ternary system can be modeled by a binary system).

[drumnbach]

especially considering the advances in technology we've made over the past decades?

It wasn't called the Setun 70 because it was built in the 1990's ya know.

[Andi]

How should the 3rd bit work? A bit isn't a lightbulb you can charge to different degrees. It's ON or OFF. If it get's different degrees it's analog. Why don't change to analog? You'll have infinite values to use. Nah! Trits? To quote Timballisto: WTF?

[drumnbach]

But there's your three values: W, T and F.

W and T are your orthodox [on\ and [off\, or 0 and 1, and [F\ serves as the wildcard. [W\ asks the questions, [T\ measures either the position or disposition of an electron (or a proton if it starts to get jealous), and [F\ tires of the whole irksome charade and retires to the countryside.

[Shvegait]

especially considering the advances in technology we've made over the past decades?

It wasn't called the Setun 70 because it was built in the 1990's ya know.

My point is that we've made considerable advances in technology over the past decades using a binary system. If the ternary system were superior, why would it all but die out in the 70s?

[Andi]

That's the point, Shvegait.
Wildcards? Nonesense! There is no MAYBE in the digital world! Not even in the anolog world! I can't say there's MAYBE light. There IS light or there IS NO light. Maybe is a human thing. We use it for things we are not sure about. But a computer can't be "not sure". And what do you mean by question and answer? Since when can a bunch of silicium ask questions?

[guest]

I believe if you look at computing history in general, the best technology doesn't always win.

You can Google to get some more information on ternary computing, ternary logic, and Setun.  Though not quite as much as I hope.

I'll leave it for the websites to explain what the real advantages of ternary are.  I should point out though that the misconception here that ternary are more efficient for data storage.  That's an illusion, because although it takes less trits than bits to encode a number, each trit will be more complex to make and takes up more silicon space, so in the end, in terms of cost it probably doesn't buy you anything.

I should also note that one thing I wasn't able to find out was how they would store trits in nonvolatile storage such as hard disks.  I'm sure it can be done, but as you can see, going from binary to ternary does require you to do things differently in multiple areas of technology (memory, CPU, hard disks, programming, ...), which might explain why it becomes less practical to convert from binary to ternary, when everything that already exists and are up and running are all binary.

[guest]

Wildcards? Nonesense! There is no MAYBE in the digital world! Not even in the anolog world! I can't say there's MAYBE light. There IS light or there IS NO light. Maybe is a human thing. We use it for things we are not sure about. But a computer can't be "not sure".

That's just silly, the computer can be programmed to say whatever the programmer wants it to say, including "Maybe" if that's what's needed.

It's best not to confuse ternary computation with formal ternary logic.  No doubt a ternary-based system of computation will be more efficient for implementing ternary logic, but the two are not dependent.

Multivalue logics are real research topics, you can probably Google either "ternary logic" or "multivalue logic", or even "fuzzy logic" to get more information on it.  I believe they had been considered in the course of artificial intelligence research.

And if you think having "maybe" in computer logic is weird, considered another current cutting edge research in computer science:  quantum computing.  There, your "qubit" not only can represent 0 or 1, they can also represent (theoretically) "everything in between".  You heard me right, you can get your qubit to hold values like "75% probability of 0, 25% probability of 1" and the like.  Try to wrap your head around that.  

[drumnbach]

My point is that we've made considerable advances in technology over the past decades using a binary system. If the ternary system were superior, why would it all but die out in the 70s?

Like I said, the Russian government did not want to fund it. You have to take into account the sociological climate of Russia in them days. Just about everything was under state control, and if the government didn't like ternary computers then ternary computers would never see the digital light of day.

As for wildcards being nonsense, I think the real thing to consider here is how nonsensical it is for 'trit' values to grow weary of their lives as trit values and relocate to a scenic villa in Greece.

Thanks Guest for clearing up my points (the ones that weren't bulls*** at least!)

[Andi]

Whatever... Maybe somewhere in Area 51 they are working with quatrobits or even more. Who knows?

This whole discussion is off-topic.