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From: laser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.laser-printers
Subject: Re: Fast PostScript engines
Message-ID: <8602071428.AA14467@oce-rd2.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Feb-86 09:28:03 EST
Article-I.D.: oce-rd2.8602071428.AA14467
Posted: Fri Feb  7 09:28:03 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Feb-86 01:45:02 EST
References: <8601301425.AA04955@uw-beaver.arpa>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: OCE R&D dept., Venlo, The Netherlands
Lines: 24
Approved: laser-lovers@washington.arpa

In article <8601301425.AA04955@uw-beaver.arpa> you write:
>You might be surprised.  A 68000 running very carefully-written software
>can do some large-area graphics operations at speeds approaching the
>memory-bandwidth limit.  RasterOp chips will not help much there.  Nor
>will they help much for character drawing, where the drawing time is
>usually insignificant compared to the processing overhead.  Yes, there
>are places where well-designed RasterOp hardware will help, but they may
>not be the bottlenecks in the PostScript machines.

What is the bottleneck for printing large documents? Is it the 9600 baud
RS232c or the hostcomputer speed? When using the Appletalk connection at
some 100kbaud, isn't the 68000 the bottleneck?

When you talk about processing overhead over drawing time, don't you think
something like a hardware matrix mulitiplier like in an IRIS 2400
workstation would speed up the whole thing?

Beside this all: do you know something about conversion software from
PostScript to the QUIC language on QMS' LaserGrafix printers? We could use
it on this VAX (Unix BSD 4.2), on MacIntoshes/LISA, or Sun Workstations.

Thank you very much,
			Peter Eigenraam
			OCE R&D Dept., Venlo, Holland