On submesh allocation for 2D mesh multicomputers using the free-list approach: Global placement schemes

Two global placement schemes for contiguous processor allocation in two-dimensional mesh-connected multicomputers are proposed in this paper. The first scheme gives preference to allocating a free peripheral submesh that has the largest number of mesh-boundary processors. This peripheral placement has for goal producing large leftover free submeshes, which can improve system performance. Another characteristic of this scheme is that it reduces the search space by halting the search process when a large-enough multicomputer corner submesh is found. The second proposed scheme considers allocation in the corners of all large-enough free submeshes and allocates a submesh that has the maximum number of allocated neighbors and multicomputer peripheral nodes. Using extensive simulations, we evaluated the proposed schemes and compared them with previous promising schemes. The simulation results show that the peripheral placement scheme produces the best average turnaround times, and its measured allocation and de-allocation times are smaller than those of the previous schemes. The second proposed scheme ranks overall second in terms of turnaround times, however it is last in terms of efficiency.