Implementing an Agent Based Auction Model on a Cluster of Inexpensive Heterogenous Workstations

Agent based models are computer based simulations that model a situation or phenomena from the bottom up using ‘agents’. Agent based models are often computationally intensive as they tend to simulate micro behaviours in order to examine the emerging system-level phenomena. Historically the size and scope of agent based models has been limited by a lack of accessible high performance computing equipment. For example, it would have been considered impossible to simulate the behaviour of many independent heterogenous economic agents in the development of early macroeconomic models, so that system level variables like GDP were modelled.