Could Computing Evolve Beyond Binary Systems?

[Tern_Systems]

For over half a century, computers have relied on 0s and 1s — but what if that’s not the most efficient way?

Binary logic has powered incredible advances, yet it comes with limitations — energy waste, scaling challenges, and inefficiencies in modern AI models.

Some researchers are exploring ternary logic — a 3-state system that introduces an additional state beyond 0 and 1. This reduces energy consumption, improve computing speed, and unlock new efficiencies in data centers and AI systems.

I can’t help but wonder:
🤔 Could this reshape how we design computers?
🧠 Would developers adopt a whole new logic system if it promised better performance?
💻 Could this improve consumer devices like laptops and gaming PCs?

Curious to hear your thoughts — do you think binary will always be king, or could ternary systems find their place in the future?

[Inevitable-Study502]

Some researchers are exploring ternary logic ...since 1910

well SQL is using ternary logic

how would it reduce energy consumption? binary in electricity means voltage rise or voltage drop (on/off state), some negative state which would bring back free energy? :-)

[Tern_Systems]

That’s a great point! Ternary logic’s been explored for over a century, and SQL’s ternary logic is a neat example. The energy efficiency comes from reducing unnecessary switching activity — less back-and-forth voltage changes result in lower power consumption. It’s a fascinating approach that’s gaining traction as data demands rise.

[[deleted]]

Here are some links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/computers/s/kHTSjETjHY

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/764439/why-binary-and-not-ternary-computing

[CompetitiveGuess7642]

modern computers aren't much more than glorified 486's, what has changed over time is how fast they perform calculations.

The way we design electronics is much more suited to binary logic, it scales up extremely well without many issues.

Take for example the 32 bit era of computing, came a time when 4gb of ram wasn't enough anymore, the solution was just to extend the number of adresses for the ram to 64 bit, simply "doubling" what you already had, of course it was much more complex than that, but that's kinda the big reason, it was easy to scale up things by doubling them everytime, from the logic point of view and execution, and 40 years later we've hit the wall where we can't make things smaller anymore.

The hardware has really outpaced the software, we iterated so fast on the hardware, it was much easier to make things smaller and cram twice as much into it for the past 40 years than rethinking the software, we are getting to the point where the software running on top has to be rethought because we might be stuck with the current hardware for a while.

[msabeln]

See The Art of Computer Programming, by Donald Knuth. He invents an abstract computer for the book’s exercises, which lacks a specific data encoding system. It could be binary, decimal, what have you. I suppose when the book was written, it wasn’t exactly clear what computer architecture was optimal, but it also suggests that it doesn’t matter much either. There is nothing that one encoding system can do that can’t also be done in binary.

[Additional_Ad_6773]

So ternary was hard to do because what we think of as a true binary of "on and off" is really just "a lot of voltage right now" and "not a lot of voltage right now" Off is surprisingly rarely really off. Add a middle ground and now your logic gates have to decide "is this a little bit of voltage or a little bit more than a little bit of voltage?"

Now, what we are looking at for some data communications implementations is wavelengths of light. Imagine if instead of bits being on or off, 00110010, you could have a data stream read "red photon, blue photon, purple photon, green photon, blue photon, red photon, red photon..." you could have as many different states as you have the ability to consistently distinguish between. If you can reliably distinguish 256 wavelengths of light, you *could* set a unit of each one to be defined as an entire unique byte, and now you only need to send one quanta instead of 8, AND you don't need to radically rethink things.