4 Mar
2003
4 Mar
'03
2:40 p.m.
The Soviets built some ternary computers in the 1950s and early 60s - Razdan 3 is the name of one of them. A ternary computer uses fewer transistors in a register than a binary or quaternary computer. However, I'd bet that the requirements on signal strength and shape are larger for a ternary computer than for a binary computer. Therefore, the binary computer would use more transistors but would be faster.