The Effects of Truthfulness on a Computing Resource Options Market

Grid, cluster and cloud computing provide the opportunity for resources to be traded as a commodity in a open marketplace. An options market for computing resources would allow users to reserve a resource for a fee, and then pay an additional fee later should they actually need to use it. However, a major issue is ensuring that users do not falsify their likely requirements with the objective of reducing costs while keeping their right to use the resource. This paper describes a computer simulation of a two-period model that was proposed by Wu, Zhang and Huberman in 2008, which they claimed promoted truth-telling among the resource buyers population. Wu et al. provided a theoretical description and analysis of their model, but presented no empirical results. Our work, reported in this paper, allows for detailed exploration of less abstract, and more heterogeneous, instantiations of their model. We explore the Wu et al. model via techniques similar to replicator dynamics used in studies of evolutionary processes. A discussion on our empirical findings, and how they can be utilised in a commercial offering of the model, is included.