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Klepsacovic

You mentioned non-base 2 computing and how it didn't work...
Well you should warn the scientists who are spending millions/billions on quantum computing, something like base 64, a programing nightmare, a processor dream

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-esw-dragoon_77

There is no base 64. Base 10 is the highest of the base systems.

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-esw-dragoon_77: Doing what he can to fsck people up since September 2001.
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STraven

Quote

Originally posted by -esw-dragoon_77:
**There is no base 64. Base 10 is the highest of the base systems.

**

You sure ?
Hexadecimal is base 16.

Plus, you can have any base you can imagine, from base 2 to base 1000, or greater if you want.
However, you would be right to say that the only used bases are 2 (binary), 8 (is octal the right name ?) 10 (decimal), 12 (not used a lot, true, like 8), and 16 (hexadecimal).

Base two is used a lot by computers. That's the base used in any storage and communication systems (RAM, ROM, USB, ...). Oh, forgot to say that the computer only use numbers. A letter is coded as a value: &=38, A=65, etc (this is ASCII code).

Base 16 is used by men giving values to computers. It's easier to write E (base 16. decimal value: 15) than 1111 (same number, base 2). Think about bigger numbers. Also, it's quite easy for a computer to convert hexa to binary, or bin. to hexa.

base 10 is used to teach humans how to count.

I dunno where base 8 and 12 are used.

All the other bases are never used. Except in math, where you can be asked to convert a number from base 3 to base 7, for example.

Maniak

How true. :rolleyes:

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Maniak hacks like
crazy!

Githon

Quote

Originally posted by STraven:
I dunno where base 8 and 12 are used.

(url="http://"http://www.psinvention.com/zoetic/base8.htm")http://www.psinventi...oetic/base8.htm(/url) (url="http://"http://www.psinvention.com/zoetic/base12.htm")http://www.psinventi...etic/base12.htm(/url)

Octal sounds like it's just an outdated version of hex, and duodecimal sounds like a really old system from when people actually found relivance in numbers being given in dozens.

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Idiocracy101

Quote

Originally posted by Rick_Hardslab:
**A quad would be like a byte only its one of 4 things. 0 or 0.33 or 0.66 or 1. A computer that is base 4, and similar in every other quality; clock, word size, ram, and transistors will be 4 times as powerful. Ram will hold 4 times as much. Processors will process 4 times as much. (a 64 bit processor like the g5 would be a 64 quad processor, it'd swallow words containing 4 times as much data each cycle)
**

Discretion: This post is long and boring. Especially the latter.
Actually, I think a base 4 processor would be significantly more powerful than that. I might be comepletely wrong (correct me if so), but a base-2 byte contains 8 digits, so 2^8, 256 combinations. Four base-2 bytes yield 2 ^ (48), or 4,294,967,296 combinations, while four base-4 bytes yield 4 ^ (4 or 1.844674407370955e+19, which happens to be 4,294,967,296 ^ 2. After that, my calculator starts to call it infinity, but I think the whole thing goes something like this: y=x^t, where y is the number of combinations, x is the base number, and t is the number of digits. If you change x, like we did, there will be two equations: y1=x1^t, and y2=x2^t. The number of combinations changes exponentially as the base number does (this formula I'm really not sure of): y1=y2^(x2/x1). Consequently, a base-anything-bigger-than-2 computer would be extremely powerful. QED.

PS: bubbamac, I don't think you have to worry about the geek thing anymore.

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"MInd over matter? What's mind? No matter. What's matter? Never mind." --Homer Simpson

Guest_Mostly Harmless_*

hmmm... with that kinda power it might be posible to have a "thinking machine" instead if a computer... what would you call a machine that is self aware... if this kinda stuff is possible we might want to have a name for it.... gigaquad.... a nibble is half a bit. 2 bits is 1 byte, 1000 bytes is 1 kilobyte, 1000 k is one megabyte, 1000 megabytes is one gigabyte... addapting this system to quad it would be 2 quads is somthing clever...how bout quadduces for now... 1000 quadduces is a kiloquad, 1000 kiloquads is a megaquad 1000 megaquads is a gigaquad. Tha'ts asuming quad is the basic unit in uplink. a million million sets of 4 is a butload of numbers...kinda makes me want to hold out 20 years for the g5k. And dont yell at me for my gross roundification of the computer numbersystem. I'm simplifying it for my feeble mind. yell at me for getting the million million part wrong Yes a nibble is half a bit.... whats half a quad? a byte?

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by Mostly Harmless:
hmmm... with that kinda power it might be posible to have a "thinking machine" instead if a computer... what would you call a machine that is self aware... if this kinda stuff is possible we might want to have a name for it.... gigaquad.... a nibble is half a bit. 2 bits is 1 byte, 1000 bytes is 1 kilobyte, 1000 k is one megabyte, 1000 megabytes is one gigabyte

Um, actually... a bit is a one or a zero, a nibble is four bits, and a byte is 8 bits (or two nibbles).

And those wanting to know the unroundified numbers: a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, a megabyte is 1048576 bytes, and a gigabyte is 1073741824 bytes.

(This message has been edited by mrxak (edited 10-16-2003).)

TomRix

The trickiest thing for designing and programming a digital machine like a 4-state machine or quantum thingummybob (just saying that practically nullifies any authoritative-sounding stuff) is that the designers have to figure out how to regulate every little signal going through every microscopic wire. With two-state signals, each line thinks in terms of 'on/off', or more specifically, 'higher voltage level/lower voltage level' which trigger the transistors to switch signals to their proper destinations.
I suppose that there might be a three-or-four switch transistor (which may or may not function like an already existing multiplexor). But I squeeze up my brain and knot up my eyebrows thinking about how to ensure that every single electrical component would function properly with several different types of input /b with only one wire b/.
Anyways, in theory, if a quantum computer (4-state signal) can be built without adding too many components or wires to make it run properly, both memory capacity and performance increase exponentially.
Parallel processing, as an aside, seems to be about the next big leap for computer science; it's a little easier to connect several processors together to work on one big task than to get an uberprocessor up and running to work on everything. Programmers don't have to entirely re-learn their trade to make their programs work optimally with them (parallel processors), either.

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Getting on everybody's nerves since 1999.