Huawei Technologies has applied for a patent in “ternary logic”, an alternative to binary computing logic first explored in the former Soviet Union, in hopes that it could improve the design of artificial intelligence (AI) chips and help mitigate the impact of US sanctions
According to a notice published by the China National Intellectual Property Administration last month, Huawei applied for the patent in ternary logic in the design of integrated circuits in September 2023, but the application was only made public last month.
It remains unknown why the patent application, which was attributed to five Huawei scientists led by Hu Hailin and Huang Mingqiang, was only made public two years after its application date.
The approach could be used to reduce the number of transistors on a chip and therefore reduce energy consumption, according to the patent application, which comes at a time when advanced chip designs at the 2-nanometre level are approaching physical limits.
It is not clear whether the ternary logic chip, which uses a -1, 0 and 1 numerical system instead of the binary 0 and 1 approach used in computing, can be produced on a viable, commercial scale. The first ternary computer was built in 1958 at Moscow State University, but ternary standards have lost significance as binary computers dominated the world.
