Systems and methods for fast color processing

Abstract

Systems and methods for implementing a fast, color printer architecture are disclosed. A print processor comprises a plurality of processing units operating in parallel to process data for different layers or color planes. A connection can be formed between any processing unit and any print head of one or more printers. Any one of a plurality of the parallel processing units may be assigned to process one, some, or all of the colors of data. Consequently, each one of a plurality of print heads can be assigned to receive data from any one of a plurality of processing units.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention is in the field of digital processing of data for rendering text, images and graphics by devices such as color laser printers. In particular, the invention is in the field of distributing the workload of processing data among multiple processors. Background technique [0002] The printer system is configured to perform a series of hardware and software operations on digital print data in preparation for printing. The printer uses the digital print data to form a print image on the print surface. Examples of printers include scanning laser beam printers and inkjet printers. Typically, one scan of a laser beam or inkjet across the printing surface forms rows of pixels called scan lines. The printed image is formed by applying one or more print heads successively forming a plurality of scan lines on the printing surface. [0003] Data passing through a printer pipeline typically includes text, graphics, images, and combinations o...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

These techniques place an additional computational burden on the processor to compress and decompress the data, thus requiring more processors for a given desired print speed

Also, the speed of the printer is limited by the processing speed of the screening processor

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