Patent ID: 8786908

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a plurality of drawing processors each of which performs drawing processing on print data using drawing processing data to generate image data for print output, the plurality of drawing processors including a first drawing processor and a second drawing processor, wherein only the first drawing processor of the first and second drawing processors is configured to implement a cache function; a converter to convert a data format of the drawing processing data from a data format suitable for the first drawing processor to a data format suitable for the second drawing processor; and a process allocator to, select one of the first and second drawing processors for drawing processing based on settings data that is set for drawing data, determine whether to cause the converter to convert the drawing processing data to have the data format suitable for the second drawing processor based on a conversion cost when the second drawing processor is selected to perform drawing processing using the drawing processing data, before the second drawing processor starts performing the drawing processing, wherein the drawing processing data having the data format suitable for the second drawing processor is threshold data having a data format in which a plurality of sets of threshold values for drawing a dither pattern are combined and stored in a memory area, such that the second drawing processor without the cache function is configured to obtain the plurality of sets of threshold values by accessing the memory area at once.