Prototype working ternary device
Quantum computing with qbits and so on is one thing, but what exactly do we stand to gain from a CPU which works on a ternary basis, where each 'bit' is ether yes/no/maybe (or true/false/filenotfound)?
Is it simply an academic exercise or could it change processor design?
It provides better density (for parity in manufacturing).
That they provide three states per 'bit' does not make them 'yes no maybe' any more than it means "true false file-not-found" - its an application level thing to decide how to interpret and label those three states, but they are not 'fuzzy' approximate states, they are absolute and exclusive.
Ternary components would actually be compatible with binary CPUs - the key distinction is if they are digital or analogue, not if they are binary, ternary or other based. Its a simple hardware problem to convert one base to another and provide interfaces in arbitrary bases - it won't require a new CPU architecture to have some memory that happened to be ternary, for example.
What practical use does increasing the number of bits have in general in computing? You get a larger address space and faster operations (like adding or multiplying, the bigger the word size, the faster the code, assuming you use the entire word size, because you only pay the register transfer cost once instead of twice or 3 times).
Increasing the "size" of a bit provides a similar bonus, you can reduce the word size and still maintain the same word range. In addition your computations (might) be cheaper since you apply your algorithm for fewer "digits" (depending on how expensive multiplication is in base 3).