International Business Machines Corporation

Fujifilm Corporation

Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Sap Ag

Nippon Tensaiseito Kabushiki Kaisha

Tokyo Chemical Co., Ltd

Hiroshi Inoue

Hideaki Komatsu

Moriyoshi Ohara

Takao Moriyama

Yukihiko Sohda

Toshiyuki Nakagawa

Toshiyuki Makuta

Peng Wu

Motohiro Kawahito

Hiroshige Hayashizaki

Eiichiro Yamaguchi

Yoshihiro Semba

Osamu Suda

Yuichi Ohwada

Katsuhiko Yamamoto

Yuji Hatakeyama

A nozzle surface wiping apparatus wipes a nozzle surface of a droplet ejection head while moving relatively with respect to the head. The apparatus includes: a band-shaped wiping web; a pay-out spindle which pays out the web; a take-up spindle which is rotated to take up the web; a pressing device which causes the web travelling between the pay-out spindle and the take-up spindle to be pressed against the nozzle surface; a drive roller around which the web travelling between the pressing device and the take-up spindle is wrapped, the drive roller being rotated to apply conveyance force to the web toward the take-up spindle; and a driving device which drives the drive roller and the take-up spindle in such a manner that a velocity at which the web is taken up by the take-up spindle is faster than a velocity at which the drive roller applies the conveyance force to the web.

Nozzle surface wiping apparatus and droplet ejection apparatus

Data transfer during processor context switching is reduced, particularly in relation to a time-sharing microtasking programming model. Prior to switching context of a processor having local memory from a first to a second process, a portion of the local memory that does not require transfer to system memory for proper saving of data associated with the first process is determined. The context of the processor is then switched from the first to the second process, including transferring all of the local memory as the data associated with the first process, to system memory&#x2014;except for the portion of the local memory that has been determined as not requiring saving to the system memory for proper saving of the data associated with the first process. Therefore, switching the context from the first to the second process results in a reduction of data transferred from the local memory to the system memory.

Reduced data transfer during processor context switching

A droplet ejection apparatus includes: a droplet ejection head which includes a nozzle surface having a non-nozzle forming region and a nozzle forming region of a prescribed width in a prescribed direction, a nozzle row being formed in the nozzle forming region; and a nozzle surface cleaning apparatus which cleans the nozzle surface of the droplet ejection head and includes: a wiping device which presses a wiping member having absorbency against the nozzle surface and wipes the nozzle surface with the wiping member by moving the wiping member relatively in the prescribed direction with respect to the nozzle surface; and a sweeping device which sweeps excess liquid from the non-nozzle forming region before the wiping member wipes the nozzle surface, by pressing a sweeping member having elasticity against the non-nozzle forming region and moving the sweeping member relatively in the prescribed direction with respect to the nozzle surface.

Droplet ejection apparatus

A nozzle surface cleaning apparatus is configured to clean a nozzle surface of a droplet ejection head in which the nozzle surface is inclined with respect to a horizontal plane. The nozzle surface cleaning apparatus includes: a cleaning liquid deposition device which deposits cleaning liquid on the nozzle surface while moving relatively to the nozzle surface in a direction perpendicular to a direction of inclination of the nozzle surface; and an excess cleaning liquid removal device which removes excess cleaning liquid adhering to a lower edge portion of the nozzle surface in terms of the direction of inclination, while moving relatively to the nozzle surface in the direction perpendicular to the direction of inclination of the nozzle surface, the excess cleaning liquid being a part of the cleaning liquid deposited by the cleaning liquid deposition device.

Nozzle surface cleaning apparatus and droplet ejection apparatus

Integrated trace selection and profiling in dynamic optimizers may include selecting a trace head based on profile of basic blocks that are executed. The basic blocks executed from the trace head may be recorded as a trace. The trace may be added to a trace nursery in non-compiled state. The trace may be interpreted and profiled until the trace matures. Under a profiling mode, path sensitive runtime information such as values, types, targets of call-sites, and exit frequencies can be collected. The trace may be moved out of the nursery to a compilation queue in response to determining that the trace has matured based on an execution count of the profiled trace.

Integration of trace selection and trace profiling in dynamic optimizers

A head cleaning method of wiping and cleaning a nozzle surface of a head with a band-shaped liquid absorbing body by, while pressing and abutting a pressing member on which the liquid absorbing body that travels is wrapped against the nozzle surface of the head, sliding the pressing member over the nozzle surface of the head, includes: a first cleaning step of wiping and cleaning the nozzle surface of the head with a non-wet region of the liquid absorbing body; a wet region forming step of forming a wet region on the liquid absorbing body; and a second cleaning step of wiping and cleaning the nozzle surface of the head with the wet region of the liquid absorbing body.

Head cleaning method and head cleaning apparatus

The inkjet recording apparatus includes: an inkjet head having a nozzle surface in which inkjet nozzles are arranged, the nozzle surface being oblique to a horizontal plane; and a cleaner which wipes the nozzle surface. The cleaner includes: a supply spindle and a take-up spindle of which axes are horizontal; a band-shaped wiping member which is wound in a form of a roll and installed on the supply spindle, travels along a prescribed path of travel and is taken up onto the take-up spindle; a pressing roller of which axis is arranged in parallel with the nozzle surface, the wiping member being wrapped about a circumferential surface of the pressing roller; a front-stage guide device which is disposed between the supply spindle and the pressing roller and guides the wiping member supplied from the supply spindle so as to travel in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the pressing roller; and a rear-stage guide device which is disposed between the pressing roller and the take-up spindle and guides the wiping member wrapped about the pressing roller so as to travel in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the take-up spindle. The nozzle surface is cleaned by abutting the wiping member wrapped about the pressing roller against the nozzle surface.

Inkjet recording apparatus

The liquid ejection apparatus has: a liquid ejection head having a liquid ejection surface in which a plurality of liquid ejection ports which eject liquid are arranged; a pressure adjustment device which adjusts pressure in the liquid ejection head; a head drive device which applies selectively, to the liquid ejection head, a liquid ejection drive waveform which causes the liquid to be ejected from the liquid ejection ports of the liquid ejection head, wherein: a first sliding motion is performed in a state where interior of the liquid ejection head is pressurized by the pressure adjusting device to set the surface of the liquid of each of the liquid ejection ports to a projecting shape, and where a meniscus slight vibration waveform is applied to the liquid ejection head by the head drive device, in such a manner that the liquid ejection surface is wetted by the liquid.

Liquid ejection apparatus and liquid ejection surface cleaning method

Embodiments of the invention disclose a system and a method for estimating the power consumption of virtual servers that operate in various hardware configurations and making a charge. The system consists of a resource utilization measurement unit that measures utilization of a hardware resource by an operation of a virtual server. The system also includes a conversion unit that converts the utilization of the hardware resource measured by the resource utilization measurement unit to utilization of a hardware resource in a case where the operation of the virtual server is performed in a reference server including a preset hardware configuration. The system further includes a virtual power consumption calculation unit that calculates, on the basis of the utilization in the reference server obtained by the conversion by the conversion unit, as power that can be assumed to be consumed by the operation of the virtual server, power consumption in a case where a similar operation is performed in the reference server. The system further has an accounting unit that makes a charge for the operation of the virtual server on the basis of the power consumption calculated by the virtual power consumption calculation unit. Other embodiments are also provided.

Estimating power consumption of a virtual server

A method and apparatus are provided to perform efficient merging operations of two or more streams of data by using SIMD instruction. Streams of data are merged together in parallel and with mitigated or removed conditional branching. The merge operations of the streams of data include Merge AND and Merge OR operations.

SIMD merge-sort and duplicate removal operations for data arrays

A method of memory management includes allocating a portion of a memory as a memory heap including a plurality of segments, each segment having a segment size; performing one or more memory allocations for objects in the memory heap; creating a free list array and class-size array in a metadata section of the memory heap, the class-size array being created such that each element of the size-class array is related a particular one of the plurality of segments and the free list array being created such that each element of the free list array is related to a different size class; and initializing the heap when it is determined that the heap may be destroyed, initializing including clearing the free list array.

Method of memory management for server-side scripting language runtime system

A maintenance apparatus for a nozzle surface in which a plurality of nozzles ejecting a liquid are formed, in an ejection head having a nozzle row in which the nozzles are aligned in a main scanning direction, has: a liquid storage member which is disposed in a position opposing the nozzle surface of the ejection head at a prescribed distance from the nozzle surface, and which has a liquid holding surface which has a length, in a sub-scanning direction perpendicular to the main scanning direction, corresponding to a length in the sub-scanning direction of a region in which the plurality of nozzles are provided; a liquid supply device which supplies a liquid to the liquid holding surface; a movement device which moves the liquid storage member through a whole length of the nozzle row in the main scanning direction, while bringing the liquid held on the liquid holding surface into contact with the nozzle surface; and a wiping device which wipes the nozzle surface that has been wetted by the liquid supplied to the liquid storage member, while moving subsequently to the liquid storage member, to remove adhering material attached to the nozzle surface.

Maintenance apparatus, liquid ejection apparatus and nozzle surface maintenance method

The liquid ejection apparatus has: a liquid ejection head which includes a nozzle plate forming a nozzle surface in which nozzles ejecting droplets of a first liquid are provided; a wiping member which wipes the nozzle surface; an edge determination device which includes a determination plate with which a front tip portion of the wiping member wiping the nozzle surface can make contact, and determines an edge shape of the front tip portion of the wiping member according to a state of the determination plate; and a judgment device which judges timing of replacing the wiping member, according to the edge shape determined by the edge determination device.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa-ken, Japan

Hiroshi Inoue