Why binary and not ternary computing?

Question

Isn\'t a three state object immedately capable of holding more information and handling larger values? I know that processors currently use massive nets of XOR gates and th

Answer 1

Well, for one thing, there is no smaller unit of information than a bit. operating on bits is the most basic and fundamental way of treating information.

Perhaps a stronger reason is because its much easier to make electrical components that have two stable states, rather than three.

Aside: Your math is a bit off. there are approximately 101.4 binary digits in a 64 digit trinary number. Explanation: the largest 64 digit trinary number is 3433683820292512484657849089280 (3^64-1). to represent this in binary, it requires 102 bits: 101011010101101101010010101111100011110111100100110010001001111000110001111001011111101011110100000000

This is easy to understand, log2(3^64) is about 101.4376