Ternarylogic LLC

Ternarylogic LLC is a New Jersey based R&D company that develops Intellectual Property (IP)in binary and multi-state switching technology. It is believed that Ternarylogic currently owns the world's largest and most comprehensive active Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio on multi-state switching inventions.

The inventions cover basic components, including switching devices, inverters and memory devices and a range of inventions related to LFSRs, coders and decoders and arithmetical devices.

The inventions are relatively simple to implement, but perhaps not simple to understand. The switching functions as applied are in general nonbinary, even though they can be implemented in binary logic.

Our inventions are protected by issued and pending patents.

Extending Moore's Law

There is a need for faster, more powerful processing capabilities at lower power consumption, less interconnect, and lower clock rates with extremely large storage and transmission capacity. The ability to achieve higher processor and logic performance is commonly associated with the continued validity of Moore's Law of having more switching density on a circuit.

A higher switching density is usually interpreted as having a higher component density. Achieving more information being processed per switch will also achieve the result of Moore's Law.  N-state switching is thus an easy way to keep following Moore's Law as the horizon of this amous law as applied to binary switching comes in sight.

N-state switching is the processing of n-state symbols with n > 2

N-state or multi-state switching provides the transformation of states from inputs to outputs wherein an input and output can assume more than 2 states.  When n = 2 we usually speak of binary switching.  The term logic is often used.  However, logic is the theoretical description of switching.  Switching is intended to be the actual physical process which implements the logic.

A 2-input/single output multi-state switch has a higher throughput and performance than a 2-input/single output binary switch. This is an aspect of multi-state switching that is not obvious.

There are 16 binary switching functions. There are almost 4 billion possible 4-state switching functions.  A 10 valued logic has more functions than there are atoms in the universe.The performance improvement of n-state switches increases truly exponentially over binary switches. This is an awesome power to be unlocked in switching and computer applications.

What about the use of n-state symbols?

N-state symbols are currently the enablers of high speed data transmission. From QAM-256 to QAM-4096 multi-state symbols are playing an important role in digital signal transfer. The rocessing of these symbols still takes place in binary form.

Much of our present day transmission and processing of data is dictated by real-time requirements, usually determined by the well known sampling theorem as articulated by Nyquist and Shannon.  The requirement to push large amounts of data through constrained communication channels is already addressed by using n-state symbols.  However, the rocessing of these symbols still takes place in binary form, creating a processing bottleneck that has to be addressed by faster and highly complex processors.

A Shift in Paradigm but no Disruption

It is very difficult to catch up in technology with existing industry leaders. Trying to make products better, faster, cheaper or differently using existing technology is hard.

A totally new technology creates often a more level playing field. It offers opportunities that otherwise do not exist. For instance, a technology or a way to apply a new technology may be so different that it is difficult for existing companies to apply. There is often an internal resistance to new thinking and a real fear of destruction of existing assets plays a role.

It is believed that a new, nonbinary technology will create such a paradigm shift. History has a great number of examples of how an industry appears to revolutionize almost overnight based on a technology that has been in development for quite some time. In hindsight, such revolutionary developments appear to be unavoidable, but were in fact largely unrecognized.

Our present paradigm of binary logic and ways to design binary circuits go back to Boole and more recently to Shannon in his Master Thesis written in 1936.

Most of our thinking on logic or switching circuits is still based on this work, to the extent that most people believe and are convinced it is the only possible approach in switching circuits. Binary logic is part of n-state switching.

Just Scratching the Surface

Multi-state switching has turned out to be a method that can improve almost every aspect of digital signal processing.  Currently we have developed over 30 inventions.  One might assume that after such a number of inventions the discovery of new applications would slow down.  The opposite is true.  We are just scratching the surface of improving almost every aspect of logic based switching.  By investigating known bottlenecks in signal processing new inventions become almost immediately apparent.  Developing multi-state switching is like the discovery of binary logic all over again. Or as one researcher expressed it:" it is like starting to work with colors after having been limited to black and white."

Access to Our Portfolio

So, welcome to Ternarylogic.com.  This website comprises a wealth of information, white papers and references to patents and patent applications. Feel free to download any of the documents.  Please be aware that none of the inventions disclosed is in the public domain. No license is provided to use any part of our Intellectual Property.  Contact us if you wish to apply any of our inventions.

Help with the Concepts

The concepts of n-state switching and its relation with binary logic or switching may be somewhat confusing. Unfortunately, a search on the related concepts of Multiple Valued Logic (MVL) on the web will not be of great help. MVL is a highly theoretical discipline, intended (it seems) to scare people away.

In fact, n-state switching is very simple and requires no previous knowledge of mathematical logic or other mathematical theories. Dr. Gerrit Blaauw, co-architect of the IBM System/360 with Fred Brooks and Gene Amdahl, and professor of computer design used to tell his students that no advanced math was required to follow his lectures.  This non-mathematical approach applies as much to n-state switching as it does to binary switching. A web site which explains the basic concepts in n-state switching is provided here. Or go to www.nstatelogic.com. That is all you need to understand n-state switching.

If you want to see an example of a 3-valued switching function click here. A 3-valued ripple adder program can be viewed here. The application of n-state switching in LFSR based scramblers and descramblers can be viewed here, and provides an embedded program actually running scramblers and descramblers.