A color laser printer is commonly used to produce hard copies of very high quality images. Images are produced by using a laser beam to create an electronically charged copy on a selenium-coated drum. The drum is then rolled in the toner reservoir so that the toner adheres to the charged image. With heat and pressure, the toner on the drum is transferred to the paper and a hard copy is produced. Figure 1 shows a system diagram of a generic color laser printer.
Figure 1. Color Laser Printer
1. DDR = double data rate
2. LAN = local-area network
3. CODEC = coder/decoder
The LAN link accepts data from workstations and network storages through Ethernet or Bluetooth connections. Peripheral interface such as universal serial bus (USB) ports allows simple data transfer from a PC. The flash card interface provides a gateway to the printer for images taken by a digital camera that are often stored on a flash memory card. The I/O and system control block governs the I/O interfaces and the flow of the image printing process. The image CODEC block provides support for Postscript (.ps) and Portable Document Format (.pdf) printing.
In the image processing and enhancement block, vector image data is rastered to a bitmap image. Filtering and smoothing is also performed on the image. Further image enhancement such as color correction, scaling, and other digital effects are also applied prior to the printing process. The processed and enhanced image is then sent to the print engine to produce the hard copy image.
Altera provides various intellectual property (IP) cores, such as a 10/100 Ethernet media access control (MAC,) USB 1.1 and 2.0 device controllers that can be used to implement the LAN link and peripheral interfaces modules. Designers can implement DDR SDRAM controllers, color space converters, PCI buses, and finite impulse response (FIR) filters in Altera's Cyclone devices using Altera® IP. Designers can use Altera's 32-bit Nios® RISC soft embedded core processor in Cyclone devices to implement the I/O and system control module. No competitive soft processor comes close to matching the performance, utility, and efficiency of a Nios processor in a Cyclone device.
Cyclone's highly efficient architecture enables performance levels that easily exceed the needs of printers and multi-function peripheral systems, making Altera's low-cost Cyclone programmable logic family ideal for these applications. Cyclone devices provide the industry's most cost-effective programmable solution for image processing and control processing. Cyclone FPGAs can also be utilized to provide system functions complementing available ASSPs. The Cyclone device family provides printer and multi-function peripheral system designers with unparalleled capability at extremely affordable pricing.
