Incentive Compatible Mechanisms for Resource Procurement in Computational Grids with Rational Resource Providers

Abstract In a computational grid, the presence of grid resource providers who are rational and intelligent could lead to an overall degradation in the efciency of the grid. In this paper, we design incentive compatible grid resource procurement mechanisms which ensure that the efciency of the grid is not affected by the rational behavior of resource providers. In particular, we offer three elegant incentive compatible mechanisms for this purpose: (1) G-DSIC (Grid-Dominant Strategy Incentive Compatible) mechanism (2) G-BIC (Grid-Bayesian Nash Incentive Compatible) mechanism (3) G-OPT (Grid-Optimal) mechanism which minimizes the cost to the grid user, satisfying at the same time, (a) Bayesian incentive compatibility and (b) individual rationality. We evaluate the relative merits and demerits of the above three mechanisms using game theoretical analysis and numerical experiments. I