4 ms·
There is a Texas Instruments 1962 patent for a tristable circuit (instead of a bistable flip-flop), using vacuum tubes, so it would be possible to build similar
by SagelyGuru 12y ago
There is a Texas Instruments 1962 patent for a tristable circuit (instead of a bistable flip-flop), using vacuum tubes, so it would be possible to build similar trinary computers in silicon. Though the same problem as with the old Russian Setun seems to remain: you need four transistors, which would ordinarily suffice for two binary bits, so any advantage is lost.
If you can design a tristable "flip-flop-flap" circuit with just three transistors, you might be in business!
https://encrypted.google.com/patents/US3051907 https://encrypted.google.com/patents/US3051907
- SagelyGuru 12y agoIt is also possible to design, and implement on the same trinary hardware, balanced trinary representation with base phi (sqrt(5)+1)/2, i.e. fibonacci encoding, which has some additional advantages.
- jonsen 12y agoSeems as if one memristor can do it: http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/sixstate-memristor-opens-door-to-weird-computing http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/sixstate-memr...