Talk:Ternary computer

I added links to this article under the following categories:
 * Setun
 * Ternary logic
 * Ternary numeral system
 * Balanced Ternary

I'm removing the orphan tag, but it would certainly be worth looking for more places to link from.

Original Research?
Original research is probably not the correct flag, but in any case I'd like to raise a big question mark about the Balanced Ternary section. At the very least, two's complement should be mentioned for comparison, seeing as it's by far the most commonly used format. Eg, the claim that "These advantages make some calculations more efficient in ternary than binary." doesn't list any examples, or citations. And I would be -very- surprised if there aren't forms of arithmetic that are harder under ternary, yet the statement doesn't indicate any. 124.169.126.167 (talk) 10:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Two's complement is not a Ternary number system, its mention would not be at all relevant here. As to the claims made, the literature is rife with supporting documentation.  I'll add Dr. Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming", volume 2 ("Seminumerical Algorithms") as being a well known well respected authoritative source.  And Knuth has a (somewhat outdated) bibliography.  A couple of quick web searches nets me lots of citations so I don't see how this came to be an issue.  The balanced ternary page here on wikipedia points at examples and citations. 155.101.224.65 (talk) 19:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC) EDIT:   Oh... I don't need to add the reference to Knuth's book, since it was already in the next section, and was already there when the complaint above was made. 155.101.224.65 (talk)
 * Still, it needs to have a section for why ternary computers weren't used, since this article sounds like an advertisement for ternary computers (as ridiculous as that sounds). --Raijinili (talk) 06:51, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems rather clear by reading the article that the reason ternary computers aren’t common now is because of the prevalence of, and assumable incompatibility with, binary computers. Since this is a topic of interest to me, though, I’ll see if there are any reliable sources that talk discuss this topic. Marcus erronius (talk) 18:57, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Dubious Statement - Optical Ternary
The referenced article on the optical ternary computer makes no mention of using different intensity states. Rather, it notes using two orthogonal polarization states, in addition to a zero intensity null state, to indicate the three trinary values. Oracleofbargth (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Three-state logic
Shouldn't there be a reference to Three-state logic in this article? 220.233.46.101 (talk) 09:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Note that the ternary computers mentioned in Mage: The Ascension actually run on 3 state logic, with the 3rd state being "maybe", which apparently allows them to work out NP-hard problems quickly. They can, for example, break modern cryptography faster than brute force. They bear little relation to real world ternary computers. 24.7.0.240 (talk) 19:27, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Ternac
I've removed reference to SETUN being the "only" ternary computer since WP has an article on Ternac q.v. Chrismorey (talk) 23:05, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Thomas Fowler blockquote
The quote needs a reference but I havent been able to track it down. The original citation was to, but that doesn't work. The quote appears to be real and is used in the book 'Group Theory In the Bedroom' by Brian Hayes (without rigorous citation, look here). Kellyyh (talk) 13:01, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

The future
One day, all computers will work like this. :>MinorProphet (talk) 02:50, 5 December 2015 (UTC)