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Ternary Computing
eviltwinimposter writes: "This month's American Scientist has an article about base-3 or ternary number systems, and their possible advantages for computing and other applications. Base-3 hardware could be smaller because of decreased number of components and use ternary logic to return less than, greater than, or equal, rather than just the binary true or false, although as the article says, '...you're not going to find a ternary minitower in stock at CompUSA.' Ternary also comes the closest of any integer base to e, the ideal base in terms of efficiency, and has some interesting properties such as unbounded square-free sequences. Also in other formats."
Seems like someone has to bring up base3 computing every once in a while, just like asynchronous circuit design. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why they are technically superior. But it has taken us 50+ years to get to this point with synchronous circuit design and binary logic. It would take many years to get to this point using totally new technology, and in the meantime the current computer industry would continue to grow exponentially. I'll believe in these technologies when I see a useful example of them.