30 Apr 2008 07:12:01

Robotnik

Quarternary Logic

Hey guys, I was thinking of a new concept whereby we could square the amount of information stored in a bit. Currently, the information stored in a bit is whether the bit is on or off. To put it simply, the information has a base (remember, logarithmic base) of 2. If we could develop a mechanism whereby the base can be increased to 3 or 4, the amount of information stored can increased to more than 1.584 times in the case where the base is increased to two or 2 (twice ) if the base is increased to 4. This can be accomplished by sensitizing 3(4 if possible) voltage levels instead of the two currently. Your comments are invited.

30 Apr 2008 10:34:49

Tim Wescott

Re: Quarternary Logic

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:12:01 -0700, Robotnik wrote: > Hey guys, > I was thinking of a new concept whereby we could > square the amount of information stored in a bit. Currently, the > information stored in a bit is whether the bit is on or off. To put it > simply, the information has a base (remember, logarithmic base) of 2. If > we could develop a mechanism whereby the base can be increased to 3 or > 4, the amount of information stored can increased to more than 1.584 > times in the case where the base is increased to two or 2 (twice ) if > the base is increased to 4. > This can be accomplished by sensitizing 3(4 if > possible) voltage levels instead of the two currently. Your comments are > invited. The concept has been around since digital computing was invented. For computation it seems to take less circuitry to do everything in binary than to try to have comparators to distinguish more than two levels, and definitions for logic to do anything with these levels. At least some flash memory chips store in multiple levels, but I couldn't tell you which ones (other than Intel pushed it hard a decade ago when they first came out with it). -- Tim Wescott Control systems and communications consulting http://www.wescottdesign.com Need to learn how to apply control theory in your embedded system? "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" by Tim Wescott Elsevier/Newnes, http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html