Mike Speciner wrote: ----- What does c have to do with it? ----- Nothing, as far as I can tell. But a logarithm must have a base. ----- And why do you think a trit would take the same amount of space as a bit? ----- I was just counting storage *locations* for bits vs. trits. —Dan ----- On 06-Jan-19 16:59, Dan Asimov wrote:
Since useful quanputers might be a long ways off, maybe some other stunt could speed up current computation as we know it.
If trits could be stored, retrieved, and copied as easily as bits, there would be less *space* needed by a factor of of log_c(2)/log_c(3) = .6309+, where c = zeta(3).
Perhaps someone knowledgeable can estimate how much trits could actually speed up computation. Surely this has been much studied by now.
But the practical question is, Is there a practical way to build trit-based processors? Would it be easier if they could be as large as a room, or larger?