Ternary circuits: why R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation · HackerPapers discussions

Ternary circuits: why R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation — mentioned by mrob

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:32:39 GMT

The concept of radix economy assumes that hardware complexity for each logic element is proportional to the number of logic levels. In practice this isn't true, and base 2 is best. >Ternary circuits: why R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.06841 Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38979356

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Ternary circuits: why R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation — HN submission

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 12:29:08 GMT

Ternary circuits: R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation (2019)

54 points; 85 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Ternary circuits: why R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation — mentioned by rcxdude

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 18:44:16 GMT

It's not so clear ternary would actually be an improvement: at least in terms of how we can implement circuits today, ternary's radix efficiency is offset by the inefficiency of implementing ternary logic. It might work if you have a new way of constructing logic circuits where this efficiency difference doesn't appear. (see https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.06841)

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Ternary circuits: why R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation — mentioned by rcxdude

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 18:42:02 GMT

Also, this efficiency is generally offset by the increased inefficiency of the implementations of the operations[1]. For communication any number of symbols may be optimal depending on the nature of the channel, but for computation it definitely looks like binary is better, at least until we move to a fundamentally different way of constructing logic. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.06841

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Ternary circuits: why R=3 is not the Optimal Radix for Computation — mentioned by moefh

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 18:19:35 GMT

> Balanced Ternary can be mathematically elegant way to represent numbers When discussing ternary computation, I always see people talking about representation and storage. In these aspects, ternary can indeed be more elegant and efficient than binary. I never see any discussion about the complexity of the physical circuits, though. From the little I have seen (see [1]) it seems that using ternary circuits for computation will never be a good idea. Even though you'd need fewer wires to carry information, that advantage is more than cancelled by the increased complexity of the computation…

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