Parallel printing system having flow control in a virtual disk transfer system

A method of operating a printing system for parallel processing a print job with a plurality of processing nodes into a printer ready format for printing the print job, said parallel processing nodes communicating with a virtual disk remote transfer system, comprising:

• splitting the print job into a plurality of job chunks to be run separately over a plurality of parallel processors, wherein the sizes of the chunks are selected in accordance with predetermined selection factors for optimizing efficiency of the parallel processing printing;
• selectively storing the job chunks and print-ready pages in the virtual disk remote transfer system, wherein the virtual disk remote transfer system comprises an intermediary storage for data transfer to selected processing nodes including a RAM and a physical disk, and a transparent networked file system interface, and wherein the virtual disk remote transfer system is implemented by providing a shared memory interface;
• paging out the chunks of data from the virtual disk remote transfer system in a most-recently used order, wherein a least recently-used chunk is read soonest;
• assigning each of the plurality of job chunks to selected processing nodes for parallel processing the job chunks into the printer-ready format;
• monitoring available space in the virtual disk remote transfer system including detecting a data overflow in the RAM and storing new data in the physical disk until data storage in the RAM is available;
• selectively blocking reads of the job chunks and print ready data stored in the virtual disk remote transfer system until receipt of an end of file signal;
• and
• printing the print job.

A method of operating a printing system for parallel processing comprising the steps of:

• inputting a print job;
• storing the print job in a spooling system;
• determining the language, size and location of the print job;
• advising a supervisor to select splitter;
• advising splitter of job location and chunk parameters;
• assigning chunk to rasterized image processor (RIP) nodes;
• splitting the job into chunks;
• selectively storing the job chunks in a virtual disk remote system for intermediary storage for data transfer to selected processing nodes, said system providing a shared memory interface and a transparent networked file system interface;
• selectively blocking reads of the job chunks and print ready data stored in the virtual disk remote transfer system until receipt of an end of file signal;
• sending chunks to RIP node;
• maintain chunk order by collector;
• advising supervisor of chunk completion by splitter;
• advising collector of page to chunk association;
• parallel processing of chunks by RIP nodes;
• advising supervisor and collector that chunk processing completed;
• sending rasterized chunks to memory;
• completing print job by splitter;
• and
• advising supervisor of end-of-job by collector.