Patent ID: 8270023
Filing Date: 2012-09-18
Classification: B41J

Abstract:
1. A print engine controller for a pagewidth inkjet printer, said controller comprising: an interface for connection to an input data bus to receive page data to be processed prior to printing; a data bus connected to the interface to communicate data to various circuitry components of the controller; a memory connected to the data bus and configured so that as one page is loaded another previously loaded page is read from the memory to permit the controller to act in a double-buffered manner; and a print engine pipeline connected to the data bus and configured to read the page data from the memory and process the page data into a form suitable for printing by the pagewidth inkjet printer, wherein the print engine pipeline includes expansion and decoding circuitry configured to expand and decode the page data read from the memory in parallel, the expansion and decoding circuitry includes contone and bi-level decompression circuitry for decompressing a contone layer of compressed page data and bi-level of compressed page data respectively, and the contone decompression circuitry includes a JPEG decoder, and the bi-level decompression circuitry includes a fax decoder.