FPGA

[Luke -Jr]

On Monday 13 August 2007, Jared wrote:
> For example, lets see how 0.6 would be represented using only 3
> digits. Based on the following table, we get the following results:
>
>     Base 2: 101 = .500 + .000 + .125 = .625
>     The margin of error is: .625 - .600 = .025 Error
>
>     Base 3: 121 = .333 + .222 + .037 = .592
>     The margin of error is: .600 - .592 = .008 Error
>
> As you can see, base 3 is much more accurate.

You're not making a valid comparison. 3 digits of base 2 only has 8 possible 
combinations while 3 digits of base 3 gives 27 (237% more!). To be fair, you 
would need to compare 8 digits of base 2 with 5 digits of base 3, and then 
base 2 would have only a slight advantage of 5% more possibilities.

> The trinary math system utilizes the 3 natural states of
> electrical current flow. A wire conducts in one direction, or
> the other, or not at all. Base 4 would need to have 4 states,
> which don’t naturally exist. A designer would need to use
> discrete voltage levels to make it work. This leads to noise
> margin problems and increased power consumption because the
> transistors will need to be in the active state. If the designer
> tried to quantize the numbers for mathematical operators, he
> would have to build 4 window detectors to signal when voltage
> represents a specific number. Just detecting the individual
> numbers make anything above base 3 unwieldy.

That's an efficiency and implementation problem and nothing more.

> p.s. for anyone still reading. the idea that someone is WRONG is
> itself a binary assumption which virtually disappears when you
> start thinking in ternary. Instead of saying someone is WRONG,
> you simply say "Oh, he hasn't yet completed his journey on that
> subject..." And then you have a moral imperative to help him learn,
> instead of a moral imperative to "correct" him. Unless of course,
> he really is wrong, which is exceedingly rare, like one per billion
> or so.

This sounds exceedingly relativistic. Objective statements are either right or 
wrong. If someone believes a falsehood through ignorance, they may not be at 
fault, but the fact is they're still wrong.