Digital Sleep?

In pondering the behaviors that a "mind clone" would have in its virtual world, I came to an interesting idea regarding sleep. Would a digital clone of one's conscious need to sleep/dream, and additionally, would it contain an unconscious?

It is currently believed that we, as humans, spend a third of our life sleeping in order to let our biological functions rest and "recoup." Most importantly, our brains need sleep in order to continue to function properly. If we go for a few days without it, we start to experience negative side effects.

Along with recouping, it is also believed that our subconscious is most active during this time and that our lives are "figured out" during sleep. By analyzing experiences more rationally and undisturbed, our unconscious deals with problems that our conscious mind is not capable of dealing with. REM sleep seems to be the most critical aspect towards our mental functions in that during it, there is increased brain activity and this is where most dreams occur.

A virtual self would not be held by the biological processes which we have become adapted to. So, would the virtual self therefore have one third more time than us to be "conscious?" Would a virtual clone possess a subconscious, or would it be an advanced hybrid of both conscious and subconscious of which we do not possess?

Is there a way that possibly a process for separating what constitutes as conscious and unconscious could be calculated, allowing for the digital clone to have both types of conscious? For example, a program that explicitly inhibits things tagged as subconscious traits from playing a large role in an "awake" clone, while allowing them to play a larger role if the clone is "asleep."

Also, would programming a digital self to rest be an advantage to it, or would it just hinder its evolution? If one were to upload one's conscious onto a machine, there could possibly be a way to run simulations that would allow one to find out the outcome were certain situations to occur. Similar to the Matrix training programs, one could be virtually placed into an environment and perform activities to determine what would happen in the real world.

In conclusion, I believe that in order to maintain their "clone" status, we would have to program mind uploads to behave exactly as the user, in terms of behaviors like sleep and possessing a subconscious. However, it may be that these uploads could becomes more than just clones, but rather more intelligent versions of ourselves. Through the elimination of sleep and a more alert subconscious, these clones could surpass our mental functions and transcend the limits of biological thinking.