Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!mailrus!cornell!calvin!johns
From: johns@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU (John Sahr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: non-binary hardware
Message-ID: <655@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: 14 Sep 88 00:01:11 GMT
References: <1285@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <3473@phri.UUCP> <5718@utah-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: johns@calvin.ee.cornell.edu.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: Cornell Space Plasma Physics Group
Lines: 36

In article <5718@utah-cs.UUCP> u-dmfloy%sunset.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Daniel M Floyd) writes:
>For example:
>
>Trinary 'AND':
>
>    0 1 2              0 1 2
>=========          =========
>0 | 0 0 0          0 | 0 0 0
>1 | 0 1 2          1 | 0 1 2
>2 | 0 2 2          2 | 0 2 1
>

There is at least one more possibility, namely

    0 1 2
=========
0 | F F F
1 | F T T
2 | F T T

The issue is, basically, what do you mean by AND?  What I've written is
a truth table for a logical AND, which is basically how C works.  D M Floyd
has proposed operations which are "bit wise" or finite field binary
operations, depending upon your point of view.

Computing gear which had n-stable states, n > 2, would be pretty fascinating
stuff to play with, and might even have some nice practical applications.
n-ary systems, with n odd, would be useful for expressing some of the radar
signals that I deal with in my work.

I'll believe it when I see it (n-ary logic), however.
-- 
John Sahr,                          School of Elect. Eng.,  Upson Hall   
                                    Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

ARPA: johns@calvin.ee.cornell.edu; UUCP: {rochester,cmcl2}!cornell!calvin!johns