Can Economics-based Resource Allocation Prove Effective in a Computation Marketplace?

13 years 4 months ago

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Several companies offer computation on demand for a fee. More companies are expected to enter this business over the next decade, leading to a marketplace for computation resources. Resources will be allocated through economic mechanisms that establish the relative values of providers and customers. Society at large should benefit from discoveries obtained through the vast computing power that will become available. Given such a computation marketplace, can economics-based resource allocation provide benefits for providers, customers and society? To investigate this question, we simulate a grid economy where individual providers and customers pursue their own ends and we measure resulting effects on system welfare. In our experiments, customers attempt to maximize their individual utilities, while providers pursue strategies chosen from three classes: information-free, utilization-based and economics-based. We find that, during periods of excess demand, economics-based strategies yiel...

Kevin L. Mills, Christopher Dabrowski

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