An efficient free-list submesh allocation scheme for two-dimensional mesh-connected multicomputers

This paper presents an efficient free-list submesh allocation scheme for two-dimensional mesh-connected systems. The scheme maintains an unordered list of free submeshes. For allocation, it selects the first free submesh that has at least the same size as the request, and when the selected submesh is larger than the request the part actually allocated is one that has the largest number of busy neighbors and mesh boundary processors. Whereas the best previously proposed schemes have time complexities that are either quadratic or cubic in the number of free or allocated submeshes, the time complexity of the proposed scheme is linear in the number of free submeshes. To evaluate the effectiveness of the scheme, its system performance in terms of parameters such as the average job turnaround time was compared to that of promising previously proposed schemes. Simulation results show that the scheme performs at least as well as these schemes, yet it has the lowest time complexity.