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Multitasking in a biomorph

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Mon, 2013-09-30 06:25

Lorsa

Multitasking in a biomorph

Something said in another thread made me remember a question I was meant to ask. How does the multitasking implant really work in a biomorph? It's said it interacts with the cortical stack to create two short-term forks that allows you to do many things at the same time. The question, obviously, is; where are those forks located? They can't very well be ran in the brain, a multiple personality implant allows two egos to be sleeved into the same morph and assuming this is the limit then the multitasking forks is hardly located there. Also, if that was the case, then any new iteration of forks (they were supposed to be merged very regularly) would take about an hour to sleeve in. Hardly very efficient. Not to mention that you would need some form of implanted ego bridge to do it. If they're run on a separate device then the forks shouldn't receive the normal sleeving bonuses on the morph as they'd essentially be infomorphs. This doesn't seem to be the case, or at least isn't mentioned. Unfortunately we also run into the same problem with merging as before, when they forks merge, the new ego needs to be sleeved into the biobrain of the morph, and how is this done without having some form of implanted egobridge? Not to mention it would take, if not an hour so at least 10 minutes (merging through Mnemonic augmentation, another problematic implant). So the question is; how does it really work? Or should it logically not work at all in biomorphs and only be able to function in cyberbrains as they can run multiple forks more logically and still receive the sleeving bonuses and have much much quicker sleeving times?

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Mon, 2013-09-30 07:20

Yaginor

Lorsa wrote:where are those

Lorsa wrote:
where are those forks located?

In the implant. Same as with Multiple Personality implant. Cyberbains cannot run multiple forks. They can only emulate one brain at a time. That's why even synthmorphs need Ghostride Module to carry extra AIs or egos.

Mon, 2013-09-30 07:25

Lorsa

Yaginor wrote:Lorsa wrote

Yaginor wrote:
Lorsa wrote:
where are those forks located?
In the implant. Same as with Multiple Personality implant. Cyberbains cannot run multiple forks. They can only emulate one brain at a time. That's why even synthmorphs need Ghostride Module to carry extra AIs or egos.

Multiple personality implant makes extra room in the brain to hold two egos at the same time. So it's obviously not the same. And if they're run on a computer implant then you shouldn't get your morph bonuses for those extra actions. A cyberbrain comes with built-in Ghostrider module according to the rules and even so it's quite easy to see how you could add in some extra computing power to a cyberbrain to hold a total of three egos. It's much harder to understand in a biomorph.

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Mon, 2013-09-30 08:47

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Lorsa wrote:Something said in

Lorsa wrote:
Something said in another thread made me remember a question I was meant to ask. How does the multitasking implant really work in a biomorph?

I have had similar questions myself. The problem is when I go ask the question, I do research before hand to be sure of the details, but then I realize I don't understand the question as well as I thought, so I post pone posting (and I usually forget about asking the question).

Lorsa wrote:
It's said it interacts with the cortical stack to create two short-term forks that allows you to do many things at the same time. The question, obviously, is; where are those forks located?

Maybe the forks reside in a pair of special kind of ghost rider modules? The augmentation is supposed to give the biomorph 2 additional mental actions per action phase, so maybe these modules can emulate the cognitive abilities of the morph (so they used the same bonuses), and are able to link the forks so they can function as one entity (instead of handling the forks as separate individuals). Nanoware like Oracle and Skillware can do some of the things you need to do what I'm talking about, so there may be a type of nanoware that could do all those things. I should point out I'm trying to rationalize things so I (or we) don't need to change the rules... much.

Lorsa wrote:
Unfortunately we also run into the same problem with merging as before, when they forks merge, the new ego needs to be sleeved into the biobrain of the morph, and how is this done without having some form of implanted egobridge? Not to mention it would take, if not an hour so at least 10 minutes (merging through Mnemonic augmentation, another problematic implant).

My conclusion that the Mnemonic Augmentation does have the means to alter the brain of a biomorph. This makes it possible to merge forks in biomorphs without the aid of an egobridge. This is why I fear what could happen if someone where to hack a biomorph's Mnemonic Augmentation. The abilities of a biomorph Mnemonic Augmentation is probably inferior to a proper egobridge (it may or may not be able to resleeve someone, and would likely take much much longer to complete if possible). Trying to merge an ego with a recent fork would likely to be less work since so much is similar to begin with, and therefore more likely to work properly. An alternative is that the ego is not properly resleeved (resleeving the merged fork that is), but rather the Mnemonic Augmentation uses nanoware to directly connect data gathered from the Cortical Stack (where the merged fork is stored) and provides the data to the biomorph brain. In a sense, the ego isn't really properly merged, but rather the nanoware allows the individual to act as though it did. Nanoware like Oracles or Skillware does alter one's mental abilities by adding new data or abilities, so it wouldn't surprise me if it could mimic a proper merge as well. As such, a Cortical Stack would carry the merged fork, which uses nanoware to run the merged fork on the organic brain sleeved to a fork of itself, and the nanoware deals with the minor differences. ---- One of the questions I have in this topic is, can the biomorph do stuff while merging by Mnemonic Augmentation, or does it have sit down and let it do its job (if you don't want it to fry your brain)?

Mon, 2013-09-30 23:33

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

I imagine the multitasking

I imagine the multitasking implant is much like the multiple personalities one, just more tightly integrated. As for mnemonic augmentation and cortical stacks, it takes 10 minutes for the first stack backup to occur. This implies further stack backups are discrete chunks of only the differences/changes in brain state not the whole thing.

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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Tue, 2013-10-01 06:17

Lorsa

NewtonPulsifer wrote:I

NewtonPulsifer wrote:
I imagine the multitasking implant is much like the multiple personalities one, just more tightly integrated.

Could you elaborate? It doesn't really make sense to me that a cyberware would work like a (much more expensive) bioware implant.

NewtonPulsifer wrote:
As for mnemonic augmentation and cortical stacks, it takes 10 minutes for the first stack backup to occur. This implies further stack backups are discrete chunks of only the differences/changes in brain state not the whole thing.

I figured it would be something like that. My follow-up question would then be; how does the nanobots know that a new ego has been sleeved in and at what time they can start transmitting only changes? Also, could you "reset" this in some way by accessing the cortical stack nanobots and have them transmit the ego to a secondary place as well (that could be in your possession)? Sort of stealing the ego by infiltrating the nanobots that interact with the cortical stack.

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Tue, 2013-10-01 10:07

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

Lorsa wrote:NewtonPulsifer

Lorsa wrote:
NewtonPulsifer wrote:
I imagine the multitasking implant is much like the multiple personalities one, just more tightly integrated.
Could you elaborate? It doesn't really make sense to me that a cyberware would work like a (much more expensive) bioware implant.

The cortical stack implant in a bio-brain is a pretty massive change to the brain. If you look at a slide of brain tissue there is *zero* room for nanites. So a bunch of nanites would need to actually replace significant portions of the brain. About 90% of the brain is glial (comes from the word for glue) cells that nourish and support the other 10% (neurons and synapses) - probably *all* of the glial cells would be replaced by cortical stack nanite structures. So for instance any flat who got a cortical stack implant has probably had up to 90% of their brain eaten by nanites that then replaced their function. This creates a "hard sci-fi" verisimilitude issue with EP inasmuch as we now know that some mental things like genius level intelligence are not just due to neural structure (if at all) but more due (and perhaps entirely due) to the efficiency of a person's glial cells. So a flat who naturally has a COG 30 and fiinishes getting a cortical stack implant just had the nanites eat most of what gives them that COG 30....so what's their COG now? But I digress. So say restructuring the brain such that it has say twice the neurons and synapses (multiple personalities) by exploiting more efficient nanite "glial" cells to make space or having a cyberstructure built in the brain by exploiting extra space available due to more efficient cortical stack nanites - either could work. I wouldn't try to think [i]too[/i] hard on it because Eclipse Phase gets it wrong in the first place (by the way they put all mental attributes as an ego trait - COG wouldn't be for instance - it would be a morph trait). Also, both augmentations are the same price - [High].

Lorsa wrote:

NewtonPulsifer wrote:
As for mnemonic augmentation and cortical stacks, it takes 10 minutes for the first stack backup to occur. This implies further stack backups are discrete chunks of only the differences/changes in brain state not the whole thing.
I figured it would be something like that. My follow-up question would then be; how does the nanobots know that a new ego has been sleeved in and at what time they can start transmitting only changes? Also, could you "reset" this in some way by accessing the cortical stack nanobots and have them transmit the ego to a secondary place as well (that could be in your possession)? Sort of stealing the ego by infiltrating the nanobots that interact with the cortical stack.

I doubt the nanites need to know. If you dumped a new ego in, I imagine it would take 10 minutes as usual just because the bandwidth of the cortical stack nanites would be overwhelmed with the quantity of changes. So the cortical stack nanites are always dumping "changes" its just sometimes they cannot keep up and dump the changes "real time". A whole ego is about 10 minutes. Data could potentially be lost in this situation but it only seems to occur in re-sleeving. Hopefully whomever is sleeving you is conscientious enough to check the stack contents after a "full' stack backup has completed against the ego file they uploaded for any issues.

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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto