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To me the most interesting thing about early USSR computer development was their use of balanced ternary in the Setun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun http
by Symmetry 4y ago
To me the most interesting thing about early USSR computer development was their use of balanced ternary in the Setun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun
Instead of the first bit being 1 or 0, the second being 2 or 0, etc you have different scheme where the first bit is 1, 0, or -1 the second is 3, 0, or -3, etc. So 2 would be 3 + (-1).
- int_19h 4y agoOne of the reasons why they tried ternary was because the magnetic core memory in use at the time had three "natural" physical states: non-magnetized, magnetized clockwise, magnetized counter-clockwise. Binary computers usually used only the latter two, because neutral state was hard to write reliably. In practice, it didn't work out for ternary, either; Setun would use pairs of cores to represent trits.
- sebastianconcpt 4y agoSounds cumbersome, do you see any convenience or added efficiency in it?
- nisa 4y agoyes - it's more efficient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_ternary#In_computer_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_ternary#In_computer_d...
- chickenimprint 4y agoSounds cumbersome because you're not used to it. One of the benefits of being balanced is that it's self-rounding: Just turn any amount of final digits into 0s and you're done. What if you want to express the exact half, decimal 0.5? Well you'll end up with either 1.TTTTT... or 0.11111... so it could round either way. If we were to use this system, shops could no longer manipulate us with prices ending in .99. Give it a minute to fully grasp the concept and you'll see how intuitive it is.