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
Your components would not only need to be able to be in more than two states, they would need to distinguish more than two kinds of signals coming in. This would rapidly increase the complexity of components, making them larger, more prone to error and degradation, and also more expensive. So in the end the benefits are just outweighed by the downsides.
Latest Answers