Incentive Engineering: for Computational Resource Management

Abstract

Agoric computation will require market-compatible mechanisms for the allocation of processor time and storage space. Recasting processor scheduling as an auction process yields a flexible priority system. Recasting storage management as a system of decentralized market negotiations yields a distributed garbage collection algorithm able to collect unreferenced loops that cross trust boundaries. Algorithms that manage processor time and storage in ways that enable both conventional computation and market-based decision making will be useful in establishing agoric systems: they lie at the boundary between design and evolution. We describe such algorithms in some detail.