Bifalgorithm post

Why do computers read only 0s and 1s? Why not 10 or 100 digits? Even for text, video games or AI? It comes down to the physical limitation of the hardware used to build them. Modern electronics are powered by tens of billions of tiny switches, called transistors, built using silicon. A material that can either act as a conductor or an insulator. So by using voltage to trigger these two states, we have a physical system for binary. On or off. Zero means low or no voltage. One means higher voltage. But why not create a decimal computer 0 to 9 that can identify 10 different voltage levels? Technically, it is possible. But the problem is, modern chips run at incredibly low voltages, usually under 1V, so they won't melt down. So heat can easily cause a 0.7V signal to be misread as a 0.8V signal, completely corrupting the data. Also, 10 states would require a much more expensive hardware than a simple on and off switch. So by combining these binary switches in specific patterns called logic gates, and, or, or not gates, computers perform complex math. Everything we see from text, high-level graphics to videos, ultimately comes down to this. Hundreds of billions of switches arranged in a certain pattern.

Why do computers read only 0s and 1s? Why not 10 or 100 digits? Even for text, video games or AI? It comes down to the physical limitation of the hardware used…