Replying to legorhin #jazardly I have been wondering why this doesnt exist yet, and now it does. https://www.ternary-computing.com/preorder/preorder_en.html
because switching between on and off
general
Friday, August 28, 2026
If you can evaluate more than 2 states, you're better off dumping resources into quantum
I'm actually coming around to this, it has no application, but it does seem fun
the sort of thing I could see a university building an undergrad course/lab around
I think there's no pure compute application
but I would be curious for signals with a high number of symbols, if the curve of a ternary processor ever crossed over into being more efficient than a significantly more powerful binary processor
I would assume the same, you wouldn't be able to miniaturize it anywhere near as efficiently
even if 2-state microelectronics aren't actually "on/off"
yeah, I think you could make a really cool lab around it
and because it's going to be friendly to less cutting-edge equipment, you can probably actually work on larger chips in a normal setting
I gaurentee you there will be niche math edgecases where doing something like this is beneficial, but this does not seem like something that will beat out binary computations
In my courses, we just refer to them as trinary units
I also would not call them trits
bits makes sense to shorten because it both sounds good, and also that is the most common unit you would use (second most common being natural units or nats)
at higher levels of abstraction, we're really good at modulation, look at some of the absurd WiFi7 QAM standards
I think there is probably some niche region, where a trinary microcontroller could more efficiently perform
Replying to Phijkchu_Pikachu #klombak bits makes sense to shorten because it both sounds good, and also that is the most common unit you would use (second most common being natural units or nats)
it also sounds good because it has real world application and understanding
I do not believe that is a good reason, since if we were int he weird trinary computing world where that was more useful, trits would still sound weird
bit is just a shortening of binary unit, same as trit, but trit just sounds weird
Replying to Phijkchu_Pikachu #klombak bit is just a shortening of binary unit, same as trit, but trit just sounds weird
yes but to the average person, and your brain
I think that is just a weird coincidental thing where a bit of something already means something, so it kind of just worked out
trit makes me think of trisomy for whatever reason
Yeah I agree
I just think its funny, and probably part of why bits sounds normal
trits probably also sounds less reasonable because of the double t
makes it weird
You never bother shortening any of the other units other than bits and nats anyways, because you'd have to shorten all of them and they are almost never used anyways
Pika, I didn't know that, but that's cool that's the origin of 'bit'
I thought it was like all the other units of measure, and there was just a John Bit once upon a time
John Binary gets the credit
it can be either
in information theory, its unit
it can be either, it depends on the context you are using
bits of information is a measure of something, so its a unit
there was a John Baud, John Hertz, etc.
most other units of measure were just some guy
idk why, I just assumed bit was the same