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From: phil@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Re: Fast, cheap, high-performance PostScript printers (MacWEEK quote)
Message-ID: <8709052042.AA12213@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: Thu, 3-Sep-87 11:18:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: brillig.8709052042.AA12213
Posted: Thu Sep  3 11:18:32 1987
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> have no idea how they predict a 2400-dpi, 24 x 36 inch, 25 ppm, 16
> color PS printer for under $8k....we're talking 18 Gbits of memory just
> for the page buffer.  That's almost 4 (formatted) Fuji super-eagles.
> Not to mention that to print that at 25 ppm, would need almost 8
> Gbits/second memory bandwidth just to dump the buffer to the print
> engine!

As with most laser printer speed quotes, when they say "24ppm" they
*probably* mean that the print engine can process paper at 24
pages/minute, but they say nothing about how well the processor box can
keep up with that pace.

Along these lines, the recent announcement by Imagen to support
Postscript has me just a little excited.  The 2308 printer has two or
three (I think it's three) 68000 processors in it.  That means that, if
they do it right, the printer will be able to direct the laser in
producing the image for one page while simultaneously working on the
image for the next page (or any subsequent page).  This should mean a
noticeable (even substantial) difference in overall throughput between
the Imagen and the Laserwriter.  Of course, there's also a noticeable
difference in price :-)

			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>