Why do computers work in base 2, as opposed to base (higher number here)?

Question

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.

In: 12

Answer 1

Boolean algebra works with base 2. And this is what our processors use to do calculations. For 3 or more voltages you would have to use different algebra, or the third state would just be useless.