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AUTORUN
Posted Date: 22 Mar 2008 Resource Type: Articles/Knowledge Sharing Category: Computer & Technology
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Posted By: arunkumar Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 5
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Ganesh is fuming. His hard disk
has crashed. He’s struggling to
retrieve his precious data. You
can almost hear him swear:
“Aaargh! One more time and I’ll throw
away this blasted box.” This refrain is
nothing new to a computer user. Even
Richard Feynman, in his Lectures on
Computation, summed up Von Neumann
computers by saying, “the inside of a
computer is as dumb as hell, but it goes
like mad!” Never mind the context, but
even as processors keep adding more hertz
by the day, somebody’s OS keeps playing
truant, another’s modem continues gargling
to no end without a decent handshake.
A third is forced to stare mindlessly
at an ‘invalid error’. Now, while geeks
and vendors can give you sermons on
how to solve these problems, that’s not
how lesser mortals would like a computer
to behave. And that’s no constructive way
to spend our waking time either.
If only computers could behave like
our bodies do by way of the Autonomic
Nervous System (ANS) which, among other
things, automatically handles basic functions
such as breathing and digestion. It
maintains the temperature at 98.6 degrees
Fahrenheit and rids the body of heat by
shuttling blood from the internal organs
to the skin. The ANS tells the heart to
maintain the right number of beats. If the
blood pressure drops, the ANS changes the
resistance of the veins because 70 per cent
of circulating blood is in the veins. If only
computers could act likewise and maintain, diagnose and heal themselves.
Somebody has been listening hard.
IBM, for instance, had launched an ‘autonomic
computing’ initiative in its research
division in 2001. Big Blue is already working
on the next generation of computing
which it calls ‘autonomic’ because it
believes the computer must act like our
autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic computing project is
based on the concept of SMASH—Simple,
Many and Self-Healing. This concept was
applied in Deep Blue, the IBM computer
that beat chess champion Garry Kasparov
at chess a few years ago. IBM’s present
project, Blue Gene, an MPP (massively
parallel processing) computer designed to
map genomes, builds on Deep Blue but is
larger and more sophisticated.
Key characteristics
Autonomic computing innovations are
based on the four key characteristics of
self-managing computing systems: selfconfiguring,
self-healing, self-optimising
and self-protecting. The architecture envisioned
by IBM begins with the premise
that implementing self-managing attributes
involves an intelligent control loop.
The autonomic manager is a component
that implements the control loop. This
loop collects information from the system,
makes decisions and then adjusts the
system as necessary. An intelligent control
loop can enable the system to do such
things as:
Self-configure: It’s the ability to
dynamically configure itself on the fly
and with minimal human intervention.
The loop will begin installing software
when it detects that software is missing.
Self-heal: This is the ability to detect
improper operations and initiate corrective
action without disrupting system
applications. Corrective action
could mean that a product
alters its own state or influences
changes in other elements.
Day-to-day operations
do not falter because
of events at the component
level.
Self-optimise: This is the
ability to efficiently maximise
resource allocation
and utilisation to meet the
users’ needs, with minimal
human intervention. In the near
term, self-optimisation addresses the complexity
of managing system performance.
Self-protect: The goal is to provide the
right information to the right users at the
right time through actions that grant
access based on the users’ role and preestablished
policies. It can detect hostile
or intrusive behaviour as it occurs and
take autonomous actions to make itself
less vulnerable to unauthorised access
and use, viruses, denial-of-service attacks
and general failures. Self-protection is also
about recognising and dealing with overload
conditions that could jeopardise the
integrity of the system.
Is it already here?
Some steps toward autonomic computing
have already been taken. Take the case of
Symantec with their Live Update feature.
The company needed to rapidly update its
customers’ data and software to recognise
the latest viruses. So it established a database
from which all users could do a ‘live
update’ of their system, thus ensuring that
each customer would have the latest virusneed for human intervention, provides a
valuable service and lowers the total cost of
ownership, thus making PCs more valuable
as information resources in our lives.
You can see what autonomic computing
has already created,” asserts J. Gerry Purdy,
Principal Analyst, MobileTrax.
One may also recall Fox Broadcasting’s
coverage of Super Bowl XXXVI in
February 2002, wherein Fox’s information
technology team relied on self-diagnosing,
self-healing IBM technology to supply
viewers with statistics, fast facts and
graphics. The on-site network at the
Superdome helped Fox provide up-to-theminute
research, script and graphics
preparation, and network management.
The servers featured technologies from
IBM’s Project eLiza autonomic computing
initiative to make computers self-diagnosing
and self-healing. And the personal
computers include a patented technology
that helps computer users recover
more easily from a crash due to a corrupted
application or operating system,
relying on data stored on a separate area
of the hard drive.
Then, the ThinkPad of the future is
expected to automatically establish the settings
needed to connect to a network, enumerate
the connection options and
renew connections as users move
around, without any user input.
IBM’s investment in autonomic
c o m p u t i n g
includes Client
Recovery and
Rescue, which
would help
people recover
data and continue
some operations
even after a catastrophic
PC failure
such as a broken
hard drive. Another
is Distributed Wireless
Security Auditor
(DWSA), which
allows PCs in the
same location to
work together to
detect dangerous
‘rogue’ security risks
in wireless networks,
saving hours
of manpower. And a
third, Instant Connections,
automatically
detects wireless
and wired networks
and configures the
PC to work with
them, saving people
from having to
remember server addresses
and wireless protocols. IBM
expects to introduce some
of these innovative technologies
in 2003.
What some critics
question is whether this is
really the beginning of
autonomic computing or
mere business hype over a
few great features. The fact remains that
complete autonomic systems do not yet
exist.
Simply ‘intelligent machines’?
Yes and no. In a sense there’s nothing new
about many of the elements of autonomic
computing. Those working with complex
adaptive systems, using ants, agents
or evolution, or pursuing other biological
metaphors such as artificial immune systems,
embryonics and cybernetics, will
find a familiar ring. One can also relate it
to terms such as ‘intelligent machine’ and
‘artificial intelligence’.
IBM, on its part, clarifies that if ‘intelligent
machine’ means one that embodies
human cognitive powers, the answer
is no. But if that term is taken to mean systems
that can adapt, learn and take over
certain functions previously performed by
humans, then autonomic computing does
involve the idea of embedding this kind of
intelligence in computing systems.
As for Artificial Intelligence, some involving new ways to apply
control theory and control
laws, can provide insight into
how to run complex systems
that optimise to their environments.
But autonomic
computing does not require
the duplication of conscious
human thought as an ultimate
goal.
For painless computing
The autonomic thrust has
largely stemmed out of the
looming shortage of people
trained to manage computer
systems. According to some
estimates, it would take 200
million information technology workers using today’s technology
to support 1 billion people using computers at millions
of businesses around the world. Computer firms believe
it’s time to make computer systems bear the cost of their own
complexity, hiding it within themselves and taking responsibility
for its management.
This is the crux of its Manifesto: focusing on the efficient
use of silicon is not necessarily the most efficient way forward.
It is aiming to bring about a world of self-managing systems
and a self-managing infrastructure. “The growing complexity
of the IT infrastructure threatens to undermine the very benefits
information technology aims to provide. Up until now,
we’ve relied mainly on human intervention and administration
to manage this complexity,” the manifesto reads, adding:
“Unfortunately, we are starting to gunk up the works.”
With autonomic computing, you will initially see more
systems that serve you—your bank, your ISP, your travel agent.
“Sorry, our systems are down” will be heard less often. Autonomic
features are expected to gradually appear in client-level
devices so that your individual PC will complete for itself many
of the tasks that currently make you a part-time administrator.
According to the Meta Group, the real challenge to get
these processors to work together is software. Extending capabilities
that exist on one platform to others and defining system
management identities and relationships are some of the
major hurdles to autonomic computing.
What’s the future of autonomic computing? Says Purdy,
“One clear area is the wireless realm where autonomic processes
will help maintain our future cell phones as they become
more data centric. We’ll also see the concept of ‘live update’
extended to ‘over-the-air’ synchronisation, thus allowing our
contacts and appointments to be kept up to date as we roam
about. We’ll also see more home and office systems connected
to outside information resources so that monitoring and maintenance
of our physical infrastructure will occur within the next
25 years. In a way, we’ll begin to view the systems around us as
more intelligent and reliable.”
The challenge of personal autonomic computing is to simplify
and enhance the end-user experience. Computing, as dictated
by this concept, should be able to delight the user by
anticipating their needs. One only hopes that the concept
becomes real and not just an overblown dream
protection. “Live update decreases the
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