Decentralised Economic Resource Allocation For Computational Grids

The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that the appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied with the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Grid computing is the concept of harnessing the power of many computational re-sources in a transparent manner. It is currently an active research area, with significant challenges due to the scale and level of heterogeneity involved. One of the key challenges in implementing grid systems is resource allocation. Currently, centralised approaches are employed that have limited scalability and reliability, which is a key factor in achieving a usable grid system. The field of economics is the study of allocating scarce resources using economic mechanisms. Such systems can be highly scalable, robust and adaptive and as such are a potential solution to the grid allocation problem. There is also a natural fit of the economi