Patent ID: 7171667

Claim:
A method of allocating resources among a set of entities, comprising: receiving, for each entity, a set of requests, each request having an associated value and a specified set of resources required to satisfy the request; receiving, for each entity, a respective set of local priority values for prioritizing among the requests in the set of requests received for the entity, the respective set of priority values for every entity conforming to a same normalization rule; receiving a set of global priority values; with respect to each entity, selecting a set of best requests in accordance with the set of local priority values received for the entity, the value associated with each respective request in the set of requests received for the entity, and the specified set of resources required to satisfy each respective request in the set of requests received for the entity; determining a scarcity factor for each resource that is specified by at least one of the selected best requests; determining a score for each selected best request in accordance with the value associated with each request, the resources required to satisfy the request, the scarcity factors for the resources, and the global priority values; selecting a request, from among the selected best requests, having a best score; and allocating the resources specified in the selected request.