Resource and memory management algorithms for electric printing and electronic reprographic systems
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorsRichard R. Dimperio, Bob Ho, Abde Kapadia, Thomas G. Brucker
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A printing system having an electronic sub system loaded with control software which controls scanning, image storing and the printing operations of the printing system. The control software schedules the bandwidth of disk storage and swaps images from a storage disk to a memory so that a desired image will be in memory when the printing of that image is requested. The system utilizes resource management and/or memory management software to realize improved job turn around time and to reduce pitch skips.
Claims38
An Electronic Reprographic apparatus for concurrent scanning, processing and printing of a plurality of print jobs, comprising:
- scanner means for scanning a set of original documents which comprises at least one job in the plurality of jobs;
- storage means for storing image data of the scanned documents, said storage means including main memory means for storing image data for current processing and disk memory means for storing image data for subsequent processing, a storage capacity of the main memory means being less than a storage capacity of the disk memory means;
- printer means for printing copies of the stored image data in the main memory means;
- system manager means for controlling operation of the scanner means, storage means and printer means, and transferring image data between the main memory means and disk memory means;
- and
- resource manager means activated by the system manager means when the printer means requests image data not stored in the main memory means but stored in the disk memory means and when storage capacity of the main memory means is insufficient to accommodate the requested image data, the resource manager means determining which image data stored in the main memory means should be transferred to the disk memory means to accommodate the requested image data, the resource manager means maintaining print skips of the printer means within a predetermined range in determining the image data to be transferred.
The apparatus of claim wherein the resource manager means transfers to disk memory image data corresponding to an original document that has been printed and stored in the memory means.
A method for concurrently scanning, processing and printing a plurality of print jobs in an electronic reprographic system, comprising the steps of:
- scanning a set of original documents which comprises at least one job in the plurality of jobs with a scanner;
- storing image data of the scanned documents, said storage step including storing image data for current processing in a main memory and storing image data for subsequent processing in a disk memory, a storage capacity of the main memory being less than a storage capacity of the disk memory;
- printing copies of the stored image data in the main memory with a printer;
- managing the system by controlling the steps of scanning, storing and printing, and transferring image data between the main memory and disk memory;
- managing resources when the printing step requests image data not stored in the main memory but stored in the disk memory and when storage capacity of the main memory is insufficient to accommodate the requested image data, by determining which image data stored in the main memory should be transferred to the disk memory to accommodate the requested image data, the step of managing resources including the step of maintaining print skips of the printer means within a predetermined range in determining the image data to be transferred.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.