Patent ID: 7515293

Claim:
An image forming apparatus configured to be connected to a plurality of hardware resources by a system bus, including: an image conversion unit configured to process image data by software with a first conversion function to convert the image data into a different format, and configured to access and to send the image data to a hardware image processing unit over the system bus that is configured to process the image data with at least one second hardware conversion function; a resource management unit configured to determine a memory size required for one of the first conversion function or the at least one second hardware conversion function to convert the format of the image data; and an image data management unit acquiring a memory area in a memory corresponding to a predetermined maximal memory size, wherein the image conversion unit is further configured to access a register of the hardware image processing unit over the system bus to determine which ones of the at least one second hardware conversion functions are available for conversion of the image data, and wherein when the image data management unit fails to acquire a memory area corresponding to the predetermined maximal memory size, the image data management unit attempts to acquire a smaller memory area corresponding to a smaller memory size gradually reduced from the predetermined maximal memory size by gradually subtracting a memory size without reducing the smaller memory area below the required memory size for one of the first conversion function or the at least one second hardware conversion function.