Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Kiyotaka Moteki

Takao Okamura

Yasuhiro Hattori

Norio Michiie

Hiromitsu Shimizu

Yuriko Obata

Tomofumi Harada

Hiroomi Motohashi

Osamu Kizaki

Hidenori Shindoh

In an image formation system, at least two copying machines are connected to each other. One of these machines functions as a master machine and the other functions as a slave machine. When the link copy mode is set in the master machine and when the user tries to select an operation mode which can not be executed in the master and slave machines concurrently, then copying is prohibited.

Image formation apparatus and image formation system

An image forming apparatus and a method of acquiring a memory area are disclosed for preventing a problem that image data cannot be converted due to failure of memory acquisition. The image forming apparatus includes an image data conversion part, a resource management part and an image data management part. The image data conversion part has at least one conversion function to convert a format of image data. The resource management part determines a memory size required for a conversion function to convert the format of the image data. The image data management part acquires a memory area corresponding to the determined memory size.

Image forming apparatus and method of acquiring memory area

A first storage stores input image data. A second storage stores image data read from the first storage. A control part determines, with respect to a timing at which data transfer of image data into the first storage, a data transfer of the said image data from the first storage to the second storage, based on a rate of data transfer and writing of the image data into the first storage and rate of data transfer and writing of the image data into the second storage from the first storage.

Image processing apparatus, and, control method and control device therefor

A data processing device is disclosed. The device is provided with a plurality of data processing units; a first memory shared for storing data, to which each of the data processing units makes an access so as to perform an operation; a transfer completion time designation unit for designating a transfer completion time according to need, within which transferring the data in response to the accesses made by the data processing units should be completed; an expected transfer completion time calculation unit for calculating an expected transfer completion time needed for completing the data transfer in response to the accesses made by the data processing units, taking current access status of the first memory into consideration; and an access management unit for managing the access to the first memory based on the transfer completion time and the expected transfer completion time.

Data processing device characterized in its data transfer method, program for executing on a computer to perform functions of the device, and computer readable recording medium storing such a program

An image processing apparatus is provided that includes a primary memory unit to buffer image data, a secondary memory unit to store the image data transferred from the primary memory unit, and a memory control unit that controls both memory units. The memory control unit transfers, if a plurality of items of image data are to be transferred, at least one of the items of image data divisionally from the primary memory unit to the secondary memory unit. When image data are transferred from the primary memory unit to the secondary memory unit, the memory control unit transfers a unit image either in a block or divisionally in multiple parts, and the memory control unit simultaneously transfers a plurality of images divisionally, the images being divided into varying numbers of parts so that each input and output of an image can evenly share the time of the secondary memory unit and a plurality of images can be efficiently transferred in parallel in a short time.

Information processing apparatus

In an image forming system of the present invention, a master image forming apparatus determines, at the beginning of a joint copy job, whether or not a user stamp is registered at a slave image forming apparatus. If the user stamp is not registered at the slave image forming apparatus, the master image forming apparatus executes copying alone. Alternatively, the master image forming apparatus may send the user stamp to the slave image forming apparatus before the joint copy job. The system obviates erroneous copying in a joint copy mode and simply executes the joint copy mode even if the user stamp is not registered at the slave image forming apparatus.

Image forming system

In a data processing apparatus, an image memory has a descriptor region and an image region, the image region storing a plurality of blocks of image data, the descriptor region storing a corresponding number of descriptor information blocks for the plurality of image data blocks. A DMA controller controls DMA data transfer of the image data blocks from the image region according to each descriptor information block in the descriptor region. The DMA controller comprises a register which stores one of the descriptor information blocks from the descriptor region of the image memory, and a control unit which determines, at a time of occurrence of a CPU interrupt, a start timing of a DMA data output operation of the DMA controller during a DMA data input operation of the DMA controller when an image editing request contained in input image data is received, the CPU interrupt being caused to occur by an interrupt request bit of the descriptor information block read from the register.

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Tokyo, Japan

Kiyotaka Moteki