Distributed clusters like the Grid and PlanetLab enable the same
statistical multiplexing efficiency gains for computing as the
Internet provides for networking. One major challenge is allocating
resources in an economically efficient and low-latency way.  A common
solution is proportional share, where users each get resources in
proportion to their pre-defined weight. However, this does not allow
users to differentiate the value of their jobs. This leads to economic
inefficiency. In contrast, systems that require reservations impose a
high latency (typically minutes to hours) to acquire resources.

We present Tycoon, a market based distributed resource
allocation system based on proportional share. The key advantages of
Tycoon are that it allows users to differentiate the value of their
jobs, its resource acquisition latency is limited only by
communication delays, and it imposes no manual bidding overhead on
users. We present experimental results using a prototype
implementation of our design.