2 ms·

Isn't high speed signalling full of examples for multi level (as in, more-than-two level) signals? PCI-E's gen 6 and the various wireless standards come to mind

• p_l 2y ago
  In limited, specialized domains where big chunky (comparatively) transceivers let you abuse "actually analog" naturę of the medium for higher speeds. Not for internal logic.
• kbolino 2y ago
  At least as things stand now, these signals are only used when absolutely necessary, and no real work is done on them directly. Transmitting many bits in parallel was the original way of doing this, and would still be preferred if feasible, but timing issues arise at modern speeds over long distances (10s of cm). So the signals on one board, which are still binary and parallel, are multiplexed into a multi-level serial signal before transmission, transmitted over the serial data lines, and then received and demultiplexed on the other board from multi-level serial back into binary parallel signals. All computation (logic and arithmetic) operates on the binary signals, not the multi-level signals.
• sva_ 2y ago
  > various wireless standards Electromagnetic waves do not interact with one another, so it is difficult to build a transistor with it. There's some research into optical transistors but doesn't seem to work well yet.