Math in 3D

(My topic got deleted by a Scirra Error -_- So i keep it short this time)

Instead of using a long string of 010111101010101010101

Why not use 3D space ?

Got the idea by thinking of my favorite movie, The Matrix!

Instead of 0/| why not use a variety of symbols in a 3dimensional space.

The information strings would be much shorter - thus faster.

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53738503/3d%20Cube.png" border="0" />

I am probably looking at it from a to mechanical perspective.

Being a Biology Nerd, i think of it like the Neuro-connections in the brain.

The only problem i see is that 0/| are "Off" and "On" on the mechanical level of a computer, and unless we find several other states to be in, this wont work.

Your thoughts please :)

If you know what this stuff is called, please tell me so i can research it.

If you are asking yourself why the computer is using 0 & 1 as an alphabet, and not something more complex, it's because of electronics. It's easy and reliable to just check a wire and see if "there's current on it", and "there's not current on it".

And since all alphabets are equivalents, you can emulate what you want with a binary alphabet (you just need more characters to express complex things thatn an alphabet with lot of different characters...)

The binary system is nothing more than an ancient relic. The first computer were mechanical machines (like the ones of Blaire Pascal). It was needed a way to represent the decimal system through simple mechanical switches. Earliest tries to work with only two numbers are found in india and china, and later scientists built upon this. The breakthrough for mordern computer was George Boole (you all know a "boolean", right?^^)

So we are using computer that use a very old technique. But we are not at the end. There are ideas for totally different functioning computer in many disciplines. Have a look at

Photonics

Quantum computer

DNA computer

Lately a group of scientists were able to store a short video in a light cube. Others stopped light to zero speed and beamed it to another transistor. Light might be the next step, because qubits and dna are to complex right now. But the quantum computer comes closest to your multidimensional approach, I'd say.

Its actually quite amazing what we can do with just two states.

If interested you might take a look at how things are built from simple logic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate

Imagine what we could do with a third or even a forth state.

Imagine what we could do with a third or even a forth state.

Yeah that was my Though ^^

Thanks for the Input and all the great links :) I love me some Brain Improving

Ive thought about somethin like a "trinary" system for years now. Id love to see it happen but I just dont think it will. Not any time soon any way. Everythin about computers as we know em is based on binary and it would literally be reinventing the wheel to change that. Every single aspect of it would have to be remade to support it and no existing software would run on it without a middleware/emulator which would defeat the entire point.

Its not somethin thats likely to happen just because itd be too much hassle to "start over" even if the gains from somethin as simple as addin 2s in there with 0s and 1s would be massive

I think if they could figure it out, they would do it :)

But since it would need to be on a mechanical level.. They need to find some material that can be in several states more than "on/off" i guess.

This is a Good YouTube Channel:

Yellowstone Super Computer

Historically, we use binary, because it's the cheapest to create with basic electronic blocks (until recently, there was no easy element that stored and gave back to you a variable "amount of current").

Now, we know that the fourth basic bloc of electronic exists : the memristor.

With that element, you can have cheap calculation with variable values stored inside the component.

However, you need to think about that : it's cheaper to enhance current available technology (binary computing) that create another paradigm from scratch.

Yeah sure, this wasn't about efficiency on the money level <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

The memristor.. gotta look it up ^^