Printer having processor with instruction cache and compressed program store
US6128094A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Jul 8, 1998 |
| Grant date | Oct 3, 2000 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 8, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06K2215/0002
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A printer provides additional read/write memory for image processing by operating with stored programs in compressed form. When needed for execution, instructions of a compressed program are expanded by a decompression circuit on the fly in an instruction cache. In a preferred embodiment, the instruction cache includes dynamic random access memory (DRAM). Further, the processor for executing the expanded instructions, the decompression circuit, and the instruction cache are integrated together on the same chip. A printer having a processor for formatting incoming data in a page description language (PDL), for example, executes the instructions of the PDL interpreter program from the cache while the PDL program as a whole is stored in compressed format in off-chip ROM or received from an external computer (downloaded) into off-chip RAM.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.