Thread: Processing Power

My name is Josh, I was wondering if anyone here knows anything about computers and how they work. I have been trying to develop a way to program in a base other than two. I figured one of the following would be a sufficient way to provide a higher base and effectively, more processing power which is the main goal.

1. Instead of using an on/off forumula for electricity, use a hair dryer formula, off/low/med/high.
2. Program with primary colors of light.
3. Program with radio wave manipulation.

Downfalls of these methods have been pointed out to me, I want your opinions, too.

1. "In order to detect the current, you'd just have another base 2 on/off switch...theres no inbetween here"
2. "you cannot compute using light because an eletric transistor would still have to detect the light color"
3. I haven't had any feedback yet on this one, but i think it will be just as wrong as the others. But I still want everyone's opinion.

*The quotes are from a topic on a forum at, http://forums.gegn.net/index.php

Try to figure ways to "cool" down the processor, memory, everything else more than trying to reduce the electrical loads. The PC without all of the extras like video cards and sound cards use only about 150 watts of electricity which isn't really to much. That's about two light bulbs!

I think that you don't understand my point, for one reason or another. The point isn't to make one computer have alot of processing power without having video and sound cards and all of the other "optionals". The point is to be able to make many computers that could have excessive processing power at the same time as having many programs and non essentials on the computer. This would be an explosive breakthrough and provide the means for many projects and games.

Well it's been tried by the best minds we have and as yet no one has solved that problem other than keeping the whole components in liquid nitrogen which only keeps the machine from overheating. Toi find what you want is going to take awhile I believe until nanotechnology has gotten the whole machine down to the size of a thumbnail. They are working with that technology you too could investigate it.

so, other than nanotechnology, there is no possible way to increase processing power yet discovered?

what would cause the radio wave idea to be faulty?
it would provide a higher base for programming, right?
possibly, we could even transfer programming into the base ten we use in day to day life...

That would be called microwaves that would carry power from point to point but don't be near then or your fried!

What your describing sounds like an analog processor. They are already working on programming with a base other then two, such as 64. Instead of on/off the processor has levels of on per bit. So the net result is one byte of data can represent for example 64⁸ instead of 2⁸ or 281,474,976,710,656 vs 256.

there is so much of a gap between those two...

Anyone know how quantum computer research is progressing? Watch out, the qubits are coming!...

I have been thinking again about the difference between the wattage or voltage or whatever it is. Would it be possible to use a piece-wise function with the electrical processor in order to have multiple distinct power levels that are easily identifiable by the computer? I mean, this probably changes nothing, but i just thought of it...

Are you considering changing the whole concept of the transistor??

Ie. instead of having all instructions based on 1 and 0 / on and off etc you want to have "something" which can record 2 and 1 and 0 or on off and "something else" ++.

If thats so, I think were way out of our league for developing that sort of system, we'd need a whole new revolution in computing, maybe a rebirth of Alan Turing.......

Id always wondered what our programs would be like if we had a whole array of circular type transistor things whcih could be each in an infinite set of states. The idea of programming in that makes me feel sick.