Print engine pipeline subsystem of a printer controller
View Patent ↗Provided is a print engine pipeline subsystem of a printer controller. The subsystem includes a print engine pipeline controller for reading and writing print engine pipeline registers, and a contone decoder unit for expanding JPEG compressed continuous tone (“contone”) layers. Also included are a lossless bi-level decoder for expanding compressed bi-level layers, a line loader unit for expanding page images for a printhead, and a printhead interface for sending dot data to the printhead and for providing line synchronization between multiple printer controllers.
1. A print engine pipeline subsystem of a printer controller, said subsystem comprising:
a print engine pipeline controller for reading and writing print engine pipeline registers;
a contone decoder unit for expanding JPEG compressed continuous tone (“contone”) layers;
a lossless bi-level decoder for expanding compressed bi-level layers;
a line loader unit for expanding page images for a printhead; and
a printhead interface for sending dot data to the printhead and for providing line synchronization between multiple printer controllers.
2. The print engine pipeline subsystem of claim 1 , which includes a halftoner compositor unit for dithering contone layers and compositing the bi-level layers into spot and position tag dots.
3. The print engine pipeline subsystem of claim 2 , which includes a contone FIFO unit for providing line buffering between the contone decoder unit and the halftoner compositor unit.
4. The print engine pipeline subsystem of claim 3 , which includes a spot FIFO unit for providing line buffering between the lossless bi-level decoder and the halftoner compositor unit.
5. The print engine pipeline subsystem of claim 2 , which includes a tag encoder for encoding tag data into a line of tag dots.
6. The print engine pipeline subsystem of claim 5 , which includes a tag FIFO unit for providing tag data storage between the tag encoder and the halftoner compositor unit.
7. The print engine pipeline subsystem of claim 1 , which includes a dead nozzle compensator for compensating for dead printhead nozzles by color redundancy and error diffusion of dead nozzle data into surrounding data dots.