Thats it. I'm selling out and moving on to hardware simulation. I have proven to myself that all monadic gates can truly be implemented with non-binary circuits and that I have a functionally complete set of components capable of building any of the 19,000 plus two-input gates. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or space to build larger and larger "pure" ternary circuits. I've looked for chips with many more comparators, I've looked at laying out custom prototyping boards, and I've looked at alternative non-binary tools like crosspoint switches to make the circuits more compact and simpler... but to no avail. The purist route is time consuming and desk-space consuming.

I've been on the prowl for simulation alternatives that don't make me feel like I'm cheating completely and I've finally found it. It's the Maxim Integrated MAX11300 "PIXI". The adorable name doesn't hurt. Basically, it's 20 pins of... analog(?) goodness. You can program it (using SPI) to configure each of the 20 pins to be a DAC, an ADC, comparator, GPIO, switch, etc. Some of those require more than one input pin or more than one output pin, but you get the idea. The possibilities are almost endless. While there is some digital magic happening in the gooey center of the chip, I can choose to only use analog inputs and outputs to ensure that my ternary purity isn't tarnished too badly. This is about as close as you can get to an analog FPGA.

The only thing I have left to prove to myself before I move on is a functional purely analog ternary latch.