Availability-based noncontiguous processor allocation policies for 2D mesh-connected multicomputers

  • Authors:

  • Ismail Ababneh

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Science Department, IT College, Al al-Bayt University, Mafraq, Jordan

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Systems and Software
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Various contiguous and noncontiguous processor allocation policies have been proposed for mesh-connected multicomputers. Contiguous allocation suffers from high external processor fragmentation because it requires that the processors allocated to a parallel job be contiguous and have the same topology as the multicomputer. The goal of lifting the contiguity condition in noncontiguous allocation is reducing processor fragmentation. However, this can increase the communication overhead because the distances traversed by messages can be longer, and messages from different jobs can interfere with each other by competing for communication resources. The extra communication overhead depends on how the allocation request is partitioned and mapped to free processors. In this paper, we investigate a new class of noncontiguous allocation schemes for two-dimensional mesh-connected multicomputers. These schemes are different from previous ones in that request partitioning is based on the submeshes available for allocation. The available submeshes selected for allocation to a job are such that a high degree of contiguity among their processors is achieved. The proposed policies are compared to previous noncontiguous policies using detailed simulations, where several common communication patterns are considered. The results show that the proposed policies can reduce the communication overhead and improve performance substantially.