Trinary (Base 3) computing
 

Well, back from another hiatus. I've been kept busy with my workload lately (IB program + a job + a role in a play), but I've come back with some questions.

For my IB extended essay, I'm writing about the advantages and disadvantages of Base 3 computing over Base 2 computing.

I'm not asking you to do my research for me, I'm perfectly capable with Google and an library. I'm just curious if anyone here has any sort of experience of knowledge in this field. I'm just hoping that maybe having this topic explained in laymen terms will help me in any way. I have a bit of basic understanding about the principals of Base 3, but I will have to get pretty nitty-gritty when I get into it more.

I assure you that this wont just be transcribed into my paper, because I have to reference everything from trustworthy sources, so even if you gave me the best explanation there is, I would still have to find "real" sources. I really just want to thoroughly understand what I'm talking about, and I know that this board is a great resource of experienced programmers and computer scientists that I'm already familiar with.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Re: Trinary (Base 3) computing
 

I'm not really familiar with it, but most cheap flash drives use base 4 instead of base 2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_Cell

Re: Trinary (Base 3) computing
 

There was a couple of very early computers (very very early) that used trinary. The one thing it is used in now, from memory is relational databases, apparently it was a way of cutting down on memory (i think the idea is on the trinary page at wikipedia).
These days, even the octal system seems primitive.

Re: Trinary (Base 3) computing
 

I'd suggest you take a look at tri-intercal - this is a joke programming language but uses trinary so might be relevant to what you're doing. It has 'tritwise' operators - AND OR NOT and BUT :)

Re: Trinary (Base 3) computing
 

I was hoping for a "Yes", "No", and "maybe"