International Journal of Cloud Applications and Computing, 5(1), 1-13, January-March 2015 1 Copyright © 2015, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ABSTRACT This research paper presents a new contiguous allocation strategy for 3D mesh-connected multicomputers. The proposed strategy maintains a list of maximal free sub-meshes and gives priority to allocating corner and boundary free sub-meshes. The goal of corner and boundary allocation is to decrease the number of leftover free sub-meshes and increase their sizes, which is expected to reduce processor fragmentation and improve overall system performance. The proposed strategy, which is referred to as Turning Corner-Boundary Free List (TCBFL) strategy, is compared, using extensive simulation experiments, to several existing allocation strategies for 3D meshes. These are the First-Fit (FF), Turning First-Fit Free List (TFFFL), and Turning Busy List (TBL) allocation strategies. The simulation results show that TCBFL produces average turnaround times and mean system utilization values that are superior to those of previous strategies. Corner-Boundary Processor Allocation for 3D Mesh- Connected Multicomputers Ismail Ababneh, Department of Computer Science, Al al-Bayt University, Mafraq, Jordan Saad Bani-Mohammad, Department of Computer Science, Al al-Bayt University, Mafraq, Jordan Motasem Al Smadi, Department of Computer Science, Al al-Bayt University, Mafraq, Jordan Keywords: Contiguous Allocation, Processor Fragmentation, Simulation, System Utilization, Turnaround Time 1. INTRODUCTION Mesh interconnection networks have been extensively employed in large-scale multi- computers due to their structural regularity, simplicity, ease of implementation and scal- ability (Ababneh, 1995; Bani-Mohammad et al., 2006; Bani-Mohammad et al., 2009; Bani- Mohammad & Ababneh, 2013; Foster, 1995; Kumar et al., 2003; Lo et al., 1997; Seo & Kim, 2003; Zhu, 1992). Effective processor allocation and job scheduling are critical if the full computational power of multicomputers is to be exploited properly (Choo et al., 2000; Yoo & Das, 2002). Processor allocation is responsible for determin- ing the set of processors on which a parallel job is executed, whereas job scheduling is re- sponsible for selecting the order in which jobs are selected for execution (Choo et al., 2000; De Rose et al., 2007; Yoo & Das, 2002). The job scheduler selects the next job to execute, DOI: 10.4018/ijcac.2015010101