Xilinx Solution Summary

Xilinx programmable logic products deliver significant design value to the world of printers. Providing flexible system interfaces to the various silicon components of the whole printer solution is a vital contribution. Along with resolving data alignment and delivering key control signals, programmable logic forms an alterable "system controller" including memory control, bus control and clock distribution functions.

Xilinx XC9500XL CoolRunner™ and Spartan™XL and Spartan™-II FPGAs permit designers to change their design and evolve the exact functionality needed to best extract full value from their microprocessors, memories and Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs). This is all done with minimum effort using Xilinx design software for PC and workstation environments. In system programming permits these changes to be made at will.

Along with silicon and software, Xilinx offers a number of LogiCORE™ solutions that provide additional time to market benefits with today's fast paced design cycles.

Printer Controller Block Diagram

Printer Market Overview

Printers have always been a mainstream output technology for the computing industry. Earlier times found impact and thermal printers as the cornerstone technologies most frequently embraced. Within the last decade, this has dramatically shifted to both ink jet and laser technologies, which are extremely price sensitive. Also, note that most of the printer business is held by a relatively few large players.

Due to the widespread use of small office/home office (SOHO) operations and the corresponding need for consolidation of desktop area, an even newer extension - multifunction peripherals (MFP) - has arrived. These devices combine the FAX machine, copier, scanner and printer all into a single unit. At the heart of the MFP output device is fundamentally an ink jet or laser printer. Xilinx programmable logic - CPLDs and FPGAs - have proven to be ideal system interface modules within printers, gluing the embedded processors, EPROMs, DRAMs and Application Specific Standard Product (ASSP) devices into a unified printer controller. Xilinx programmable logic does all this and still retains the fundamentally low cost and low power required of this market.

Dataquest has estimated the 1998 World Laser Printer market near 10 million units, and the corresponding Ink Jet market near 45 million units. Typically, Ink Jet units are in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars (US) and Lasers near a thousand. Xilinx programmable logic plays a part in this market, and with the high volume XC9500XL CPLDs, CoolRunner™ and the Spartan™ and Spartan-II FPGAs, an even greater part will be played in the future.