Mostly all electronics used in computers today are based on binary logic. However, does the binary logic have the capacity to be the leading technology in the future? Thus I raise the question: why not use ternary logic? The optimal base for developing hardware is proven to be 2.71. The closest integer to this optimal base is base 3, which corresponds to the ternary numbering system. This thought is not new to computer scientists. In 1958 a ternary computer was built in Russia, and as early as 1840 a self-taught English mathematician, Thomas Fowler, invented a ternary calculating machine. This thesis deals with some novel applications which can benefit from using ternary logic in current computer designs.

I have proposed several ternary circuit designs. The circuits are implemented using recharged semi-floating gate (RSFG) CMOS transistors. A novel balanced ternary adder seems to be the most promising one. This new adder can directly replace any ordinary binary solution. These applications can use any available CMOS process and no post processing is needed, but for the moment there are some limitations. This is novel technology which needs some more research to reach the robustness level of current designs.