VMM-Virtual Machine Monitor

Abstract

Virtualisation continues to be the buzzword. It’s in the news because even simple desktops can now act as virtual machine hosts. Virtualisation means simulation of a computer system, in software. Open source is software where the source code of that software is available usually in the web that permits users to study, change and improve the software. In this presentation let’s look about virtualisation and look at why open source virtualisation is going to win. In this presentation we would see the advantages of virtualisation and open source, types of virtualisation, open source virtualisation, constraints of virtualisation, virtual machine monitor (VMM),types of VMM, Secure Virtualisation with SELinux and Virtual Box (powerful virtualisation product).

Keywords—

VM-virtual machine VMM-virtual machine monitor Guest OS-the OS that is run within a VM Host OS-the OS that runs on the physical computer and hosts guests.

1 INTRODUCTION

Human brain, the most valuable creation of God.The man is called intelligent because of the Brain.But we loss the knowledge of a brain when the body is destroyed after the death .

“BLUE BRAIN”- The name of the world’s first virtual brain. That means a machine that can function as human brain.

The human brain has unlocked many of nature's secrets, but the secrets of the brain itself have remained elusive to scientists. Decades of probing into the brain's functioning hasn't yet given scientists a full grasp of the way the brain functions or its circuitry.

The Blue Brain project may be the answer we are looking for. A new initiative by scientists at the Brain Mind Institute at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and IBM engineers aims to unlock the secrets of the brain, not by lab experiments, but by using the brute power of a supercomputer.

The Blue Brain Project will run simulations of the brain's neurons to tease out their secrets. The project uses IBM's latest installation of BlueGene/L supercomputer running on Linux to run simulations of neurons. The Blue Brain computer will occupy the floor space of about four refrigerators and can reach a peak speed of some 22.8 teraflops -- 22.8 trillion calculations every second -- putting it among the the world's top 15 supercomputers. The fastest supercomputer in the world is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- the BlueGene system, when finished later this year, will have a peak speed of 367 teraflops.

Part of the reason why the brain and its functions remain a mystery is that most of the research till date have been 'wet-lab' ones, done on lab animals like rat and mice. These experiments are very complex and painfully slow to conduct, often taking two to three years to complete. This is where the blazing speed of IBM's Blue Brain

2 computers will help. Its amazing number crunching ability will help speed up the simulations of these 'wet-lab' experiments, cutting down on the time involved to a few days, sometimes seconds.

WORKING OF BLUE BRAIN

The Blue Brain computer will wake up on July 1, 2005. Over the next two years, scientists and engineers from both the EPFL and IBM, along with an online network of brain and computer scientits, will create a detailed model of the circuitry in the brain's neocortex. The neocortex is the largest and most complex part of the human brain, and constitutes about 85 per cent of the brain's total mass. The neocortex is thought to be responsible for the cognitive functions of language, learning, memory and complex thought.

The neocortical columns are the building blocks of the cortex, the part of the brain that differentiates mammals from other animals. "The neocortical column is the beginning of intelligence and adaptability," Markram told Businessweek magazine.

How will the simulations be run? The Blue Brain computer will use the knowledge scientists have gathered till now about how neurons in the brain talk to each other to run the accelerated simulations. The Blue Brain has some 8,000 processors and the scientists will map one or two simulated brain neurons to each processor, making the computer a replica of 10,000 neurons. The simulated neurons will be interconnected with rules the team has worked out about how the brain functions. This result would be a simulated model that is 1,000 times larger than any such model till late -- an electronic brain with 10,000 neurons chattering away and in the process exposing the secrets of their functioning to the watchful scientists.

"Modeling the brain at the cellular level is a massive undertaking because of the hundreds of thousands of parameters that need to be taken into account," said Henry Markram, the EPFL professor heading the project and founder of EPFL's Brain and

3 Mind Institute. The mapping of the neocortex is itself expected to take two to three years. Markram will start by simulating a single rat neurocortical column, rigorously checking the model in experiments against neurocortical columns taken from rats.

Eventually, the project will be expanded to model other areas of the brain to build an accurate, computer-based model of the entire brain. This will need a bigger Blue Brain and could take a decade to complete -- even with BlueGene/P, IBM's next- generation supercomputer.

AIM OF BLUE BRAIN :

The aim of the Blue Brain Project is to build a replica of a neocortical column, the basic functional unit that makes up the cerebral neocortex while encompassing most of the neocortex's cellular diversity. "If you are an experimental biologist, in your experiments you see an amazing variety of cell types. … The typical modelling approach ... doesn’t give the answer to the experimentalist who wants to understand this diversity," Schürmann explains. This diversity can only be achieved, he says, by incorporating experimental neuroscience data into very detailed computer simulations that "behave indistinguishably from the experiment." The Project builds on the efforts of the Brain Mind Institute, which has been accumulating empirical data on the microarchitecture of the neocortex for a decade.

VIRTUAL BRAIN:

 A machine that can function as brain .  It can take decision.  It can think.  It can respond.  It can keep things in memory.

4 NEED OF VIRTUAL BRAIN:

 To upload contents of the natural brain into it .  To keep the intelligence , knowledge and skill of any person for ever .  To remember things without any effort .

FUNCTIONING OF BRAIN

Sensory Input :Receiving input such as sound ,image, etc through sensory cell .

Interpretation . : Interpretation of the received input by the brain by defining states of neurons in the brain.

Motor Output. : Receiving of electric responses from the brain to

perform any action

BRAIN SIMULATION :

NATURAL BRAIN VS SIMULATED BRAIN

INPUT INPUT

Through the natural neurons Through the silicon chip or artificial neurons

INTERPRETATION INTERPRETATION

5 By different states of the By a set of bits in a set of register

neurons in the brain

OUTPUT OUTPUT

Through the natural neurons. Through the silicon chip .

PROCESSING PROCESSING

Through arithmetic and Through arithmetic and logical

Logical calculations calculations and artificial intelligence

MEMORY MEMORY

Through permanent states Through secondary memory of neurons

UPLOADING HUMAN BRAIN

The uploading is possible by the use of small robots known as the nanobots.

These robots are small enough to travel through out our circulatory system.

Traveling into the spine and brain, they will be able to monitor the activity and structure of our central nervous system.

6 They will be able to provide an interface with computer that is as close as our mind can be while we still reside in our biological form .

Nanobots could also carefully scan the structure of our brain, providing a complete readout of the connection.

This information, when entered into a computer, could then continue to function as us.

Thus the data stored in the entire brain will be uploaded into the computer.

The "Blue Brain" & Human Consciousness

"Blue Brain" offer a better understanding of human consciousness. It’s an actual ‘computer brain’ that may eventually have the ability to think for itself. When it was first fed electrical impulses, strange patterns began to appear with lightning-like flashes produced by ‘cells’ that the scientists recognized from living human and animal processes. "It happened entirely on its own," This helped the scientists to understand the actual processing of the brain which arised the concept of “Blue brain”.

Blue brain acts as a computer that would operate at inconceivable speeds – something fast enough to simulate the human brain.

A Blue brain aims to unlock the secrets of brain by using the brute power of a supercomputer.

7 BLUE BRAIN SIMULATION USING MICROPROCESSOR

 The Blue Brain simulation uses one microprocessor for each of the 10,000 neurons in the cortical column of a rat's cerebral cortex.

 It helps to build a brain microcircuit, in order to scale it in human brain.

BLUE BRAIN POWER

 The human brain has 100 billions, nerve cells that enable us to adapt quickly to an immense array of stimuli.

 Blue brain is a technology that uses “Blue Gene” a supercomputer capable of processing 228 TFLOPS.

 The main aim of blue brain is to build an software replica or template which could reveal many exisiting aspects of the brain circuits,memory capacity,and how memories are lost.

8  The modeling is also able to work out best way to compensate and repair error circuits .

 The blue brain model can be used to detect and test treatment statergies for neurological diseases.

EXAMPLE OF BLUE BRAIN

 A very good example of utilization of blue brain is the case "short term memory".

 In some movies we might have noticed that a person might be having short term memories.

 A another situation is that when a person gets older, then he starts forgetting or takes a bit more time to recognize to a person.

 For the above reason we need a blue brain. It is a simple chip that can be installed into the human brain for which the short term memory and volatile memory at the old age can be avoided.

EXPERIMENTS ON BLUE BRAIN

 Scientists rely on computer models to understand the toughest concepts in science.

 A computer model is being designed to take on the human brain.

 A generic template is build which allows us to reconstruct a brain according to any specifications.

9 BLUE BRAIN PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The project will search for insights into how human beings think and remember. It may also shed light on psychiatric disorders and how they arise. Scientists believe defective circuitry in the brain is the cause of autism, schizophrenia, depression and other psychological problems. The project, scientists think, could also help the search for a cure for Parkinson's disease.

And it is not just brain research that will benefit from the Blue Brain project. The latest theory is that brain circuitry is in a complex state of flux, the brain rewiring itself every moment of its existence. If the scientists can crack open the secret of how and why the brain does it, the knowledge could lead to a revolutionary new breed of supercomputers. Such computers could make today's supercomputers look like lumbering analog calculators!

ADVANTAGES  It acts as a supercomputer.

 Improvements in processing, speed and memory could make entire human brain simulated.

 Things could be remembered without any effort.

 Use the intelligence of the person after death.

 It can make decisions entirely of its own.

 Allowing the deaf to hear via direct nerve simulation.

DISADVANTAGES  We become dependent upon the computers.

10  Another fear is found with respect to human cloning.

 A very costly procedure of regaining the memory back.

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIRMENTS

 A Super computer.

 Memory with a very large storing capacity.

 Processor with a very high processing power.

 A very wide network.

 A program to convert the electric impulses from the brain to input signal, which is to be received by the computer and vice versa.

 Very powerful Nanobots to act as the interface between the natural brain and the computer.

 The Blue Brain has some 8,000 processors which map one or two simulated brain neurons to each processor, making the computer a replica of 10,000 neurons.

CONCLUSION

Will be able to transfer ourselves into the computer at some point. Eventually aim of applying terrific computer power to the simulation of an entire brain. Very soon this technology will be highly accepted whole over the world.