Spawn: a distributed computational economy
- 1 February 1992
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
- Vol. 18 (2), 103-117
- https://doi.org/10.1109/32.121753
Abstract
The authors have designed and implemented an open, market-based computational system called Spawn. The Spawn system utilizes idle computational resources in a distributed network of heterogeneous computer workstations. It supports both coarse-grain concurrent applications and the remote execution of many independent tasks. Using concurrent Monte Carlo simulations as prototypical applications, the authors explore issues of fairness in resource distribution, currency as a form of priority, price equilibria, the dynamics of transients, and scaling to large systems. In addition to serving the practical goal of harnessing idle processor time in a computer network, Spawn has proven to be a valuable experimental workbench for studying computational markets and their dynamics.Keywords
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