Comparing the human brain with the computer is like comparing a car to a bicycle. The human brain has developed in great detail over the evolutionary patterns of time, whereas the computer is a creation of our brain in infancy. What we can do to revolutionize our IT industry is to think and innovate along the lines of creating the computer similar to how the human brain works, thereby unleashing the tremendous power of calculation and memory. To achieve a state of high efficiency, similar to that of the brain, requires innovated resource management, much like the services of the Cloud.
Let’s start off with the CPU. The CPU is the “core processing unit” of the computer. It manages many parts of the hardware to make them work together. It also processes numbers and gives rise to calculations. The hotter the temperature of the CPU, the more ware is done to its parts The human brain, in contrast, uses different parts of the brain to calculate certain functions and does not use one central location to process everything like the CPU. The cooling for the brain is done through the blood circulatory system, which is similar to overclocking a CPU and using liquid cooling. Some parts of the computer do resemble the functions of the brain, such as the processing unit on graphics cards. The video processing is established much like how our rear parts of the brain use the optical centre to process vision from our eyes – a separate unit for separate functions. In fact, dreams are known also to activate the optical centre of the brain while we are asleep. In this regard, we can enhance the functions of the computer by providing each separate part of the computer with its own CPU, giving rise to more processing power. By this, I mean we can create a high-powered processing unit for audio, video, accessing system memory, inputs ( i.e.: keyboard and mouse), and for external devices like the USB and eSATA.
Memory is another hardware element that is limited in a computer. Our brains have almost limitless abilities to store information. Whenever some new information is analysed by our brains, a new neuro-pathway is created. To mimic this in a computer is hard to do as hard drives and RAM come in limited quantities. Motherboards come with limitations on how much RAM and how many hard drives can be added.
One method of creating a limitless memory system like the brain, is to use the Cloud. The Cloud has the potential of possessing limitless memory. Hard drives can be stored on servers throughout the world, which functions much like a brain. It is known that our memory doesn’t store recollections in one single area; in fact, the recollection of, for example, an elephant, would use different locations of the brain to provide you with he memory of what an elephant looks like. Similarly, the Cloud can be used to allocate memory from different parts of the world.
Just as computers have audio units, so do our brains. Specific areas of the brain control how we hear and interpret sounds. Outsourcing the audio to the Cloud would require too much bandwidth and it would probably be best suited for being local to the PC.
Nevertheless, the Cloud has enormous potential to transform our computers into a working mesh like our brains. The CPU can be outsourced to the Cloud where multiple CPU’s or super computers process the information and send it back via the web. This is already happening, memory resources on the Cloud, as mentioned earlier, are working much like how our brains store information that is to be recalled. Thus, the similarities and contrasts between the Cloud, the computer, and the human brain are many and both can help each other in fields of medicine and technology.
Dcoderr 