Truthful Auction for CPU Time Slots

We consider the task of designing a truthful auction mechanism for CPU time scheduling problem. There are m commodities (time slots) T = {t1, t2, . . ., tm} for n buyers I = {1, 2, . . ., n}. Each buyer requires a number of time slots si for its task. The valuation function of buyer i for a bundle of time slots Ti is vi(Ti) = wi(m-t), where t is the last time slot in Ti and |Ti| = si. The utility ui of buyer i is vi(Ti)-p(Ti). It is well-known that Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism gives the incentive to bid truthfully. Although optimal social welfare is computationally feasible in CPU time scheduling problem, VCG mechanism may produce low revenue. We design an auction which also maintains the incentives for bidders to bid truthfully. In addition, we perform simulations and observe that our truthful mechanism produces more revenue than VCG on average.

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