: Why are computers limited to 0s and 1s? Why can’t we use numbers like 2s and 3s for more Efficiency?

1.02K views

: Why are computers limited to 0s and 1s? Why can’t we use numbers like 2s and 3s for more Efficiency?

In: 17

19 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They aren’t. Trinary computers were a thing that people especially the Soviet Union experimented with.

In theory you could make a computer with any sort of number system.

Even analogue computers were a thing.

Practically with what we have to work with today binary digital computers are the ones that we have found to be most efficient to make and use.

In the end it come down representing numbers in some way and making things that you can feed those numbers in to get others out.

Representing these numbers as electricity in wires and on and off states of circuits is very easy.

You could build circuits where 4 different voltages represent 0 to 3, but that would make things complicated. You can just use two wires to represent inputs from 0 to 3 instead without having to come up with new tech.

You are viewing 1 out of 19 answers, click here to view all answers.