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user5103849
user5103849

Reputation:

Computers not using binary?

I don't know if this is the right place to ask such question but, ALL computers use binary, when you program the compiler always turn your code into a "01" form. But, are there computers that do NOT work on that principle?

If yes, what kind of computers they are? What can they do and how were they created? If no, why can't such computers be made?

Thanks and I hope this is good information for anyone looking for a similar answer.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 465

Answers (2)

Dietrich Epp
Dietrich Epp

Reputation: 213378

Yes, but they are esoteric. Modern computers are digital, use base two, are electronic, and use classical systems largely due to the success of integrated digital logic circuits, but it was a long road and other types of computers have been invented along the way.

Digital computers in other bases

A handful of computers were made based on ternary (base 3) logic. Some of these used bipolar voltages to represent values in balanced ternary. The general consensus is that if you are going to use digital circuitry, binary is the best option, so this is mostly a historical curiosity.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer

Analog and mechanical computers

Analog computers use continuous voltages to represent values. Mechanical computers use the positions of physical parts, such as gear shafts, to represent values. There is some renewed interest in analog computers for problems such as image analysis, where researchers suspect that the benefits of performance outweigh the disadvantages of accumulated error. Whether analog computers see a resurgence is unknown.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer

Quantum computers

Quantum computers represent values using superpositions of quantum states. Creating a large quantum computer is an open problem, and a number of algorithms have already been written for quantum computers which would outperform classical implementations. For example, Shor's algorithm.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

Upvotes: 2

Luke Xu
Luke Xu

Reputation: 2440

Technically speaking all computers are based on a voltage of

0 = no voltage
1 = yes voltage

However, there are new "Quantum computers" that are far from complete that do not use a 0-1, instead they use quantum bits.

Here is more information on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

Upvotes: 0

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