SETUN

This website is dedicated to the first successful balanced ternary computer. While IBM created the first ternary computer in 1954 (IBM 777, ECON), predating this one by four years, the SETUN is considered the first one that was commercially successful. Decades ahead of its time, the SETUN stands as a timeless paragon of perfection. .

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Guosong Liu, a neuroscientist at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT, reports new information on neuron design and function in an issue of Nature Neuroscience that he says could lead to new directions in how computers are made. Computers lag in raw processing power--even the most powerful components are dwarfed by 100 billion brain cells--but their biggest deficit may be that they are designed without knowledge of how the brain itself computes. While computers process information using a binary system of zeros and ones, the neuron, Liu discovered, communicates its electrical signals in trinary--utilizing not only zeros and ones, but also minus ones. This allows additional interactions to occur during processing. For instance, two signals can add together or cancel each other out, or different pieces of information can link up or try to override one another. One reason the brain might need the extra complexity of another computation component is that it has the ability to ignore information when necessary; for instance, if you are concentrating on something, you can ignore your surroundings. "Computers don't ignore information," Liu said. "This is an evolutionary advantage that's unique to the brain."

The phrase "the future of computing is about the past" highlights that future computing innovations draw inspiration from and revisit earlier paradigms, such as analog computers and the concept of biological computation, as classical computing approaches limits like Moore's Law. Therefore, all the hype about quantum computing, neuromorphic computing and hybrid systems is circumspect to the brilliance of the SETUN. The greatest paradox facing the computer industry is that the most anthropomorphic and futuristic computer to advance artificial intelligence was built in 1958. 

SETUN 

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"DSSP programming language" refers to the Dialog System for Structured Programming, a unique stack-based, concatenative language developed in the Soviet Union during the 1980s for the Setun-70 ternary computer. Inspired by Forth, it features a compact syntax and specialized operators for ternary (three-valued) logic, aiming for a close correspondence between human-readable text and machine code. The computer "Setun-70" was not a binary machine, but rather a software emulation of a ternary system that ran on conventional binary hardware. DSSP was a precursor to Algorithm Language Three.

So, what happened to the Setun? The new university rector considered Brusentsov's research and computer design a pseudo-science. After the Setun-70 project, Brusentsov's lab was relocated from the computer center at Moscow State University to an attic in a student dormitory, and the original prototype of the Setun computer was destroyed.

...the original prototype of the Setun computer was destroyed.

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