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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Cpu which uses 0, 1, 2 are tetriarycpu. Such systems are used for AI and probability scientific reasearches.
Increasing number of outcomes only useful for a very limited specific cases where 2 generally represent that value is not known yet. Digital systems can simulate it by making object wrapper but it takes some space and resources. So adding 2 is an efficient thing for probability based evaluations.
However general user application does not require it at all or does it at so small scales that such benefit does not cover coast to be included in general pc architecture.
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