I realise (/think?) that CPUs essentially treat two different voltages as a 1 or 0, but what stops us from using 3 or more different voltages? Wouldn’t that exponentially increase the CPU’s throughput by allowing for decisions with greater than two outcomes to be calculated in one cycle? This would presumably mean that a LOT of stuff written for base 2 would need to be updated to base 3 (in this example), but I can’t imagine that’s the only reason we haven’t done this.
I feel like I’ve explained that poorly, but hopefully you get the gist.
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There’s a couple different answers but the real actual answer is: it’s more efficient that way. Ternary logic gates exist, trinary algebra exists and can be easily (constant time) translated to Boolean data. We absolutely could base computers on base-3 logic, or even higher orders. But it’s more efficient to do it with base-2.
Transistors are the fundamental block of electronic logic, and you need this or some version of it to have an electronic computer do anything, and the binary version is the most compact, fastest, and most energy efficient. This means you can fit more in a smaller space with less heat issues.
Everything else falls from that. If you come out with a ternary transistor that is proven to make better processors than the binary version, you’ll revolutionize the industry.
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