]Incentive Engineering:for Computational Resource Management

K. Eric Drexler
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139

Mark S. Miller
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,
3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304

Agoric computation [I,II] 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.

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