"The challenge isn’t just to be fast enough", says Global Graphics' chief technology officer, Martin Bailey. "The real challenge is to achieve that goal without incurring an uneconomically high cost for the bill of materials to build the Digital Front End." • Digital Front Ends (DFE) Face Rapidly Increasing Data Processing Requirements as Print Jobs become More Complex o Increased Use of Transparency o Need for Increased Variable Data Coverage • Race for Speed is On-going Competitive Challenge o DFE Must Process Data Quickly Enough to Drive Press at Full Rated Speed o Press Manufacturers want to Minimize DFE Costs Vs. Cost of Press o Must Respond to Market Needs & Opportunities: Photobooks, Personalized Marketing Materials, etc. • The Holy Trinity o Speed, Quality & Reliability • Once the Hardware is Optimized – What Then?

1. RIPping through dataChallenges faced in the digital front end Martin Bailey CTO, Global Graphics

2. This presentation was created with assistance from our partners at Hewlett Packard. Especial thanks are due to Dave Staas, Lead Software Architect, Indigo Digital Press DFE Acknowledgements

4. Job management (submission, status, view, edit, cancel, etc.)

5. Color, ink, and media management

6. Imposition and finishing management and control

7. The conversion of rich document formats like PDF and PPML into “print ready bits” – data that is rendered and formatted for the marking engine of the digital pressHP Indigo W7200 Digital Press

8. Constructing a DFE Control process RIP RIP Press controller Pre-processing Post-processing RIP Raster cache Job cache HP Indigo 7500Digital Press

9. Work allocation Interpreting/rendering –  Color management –  Imposition – ,  or  Trapping –  or  Screening –  or  Font handling –  Variable data – + for PPML etc  for PDF with no h/w assist + for PDF with h/w (+) or (++) for PDF/VT Control process  RIP  Press controller  Pre-processing  Post-processing  RIP  RIP

11. A standard mid-range digital press (120 PPM) requires the processing of over one hundred million pixels every second, worst-case, with possibly multiple transforms, and in 4 (or more) colors

12. HP’s high-end presses (like the T400 below) require nearly three billion pixels every second

13. The primary performance goal for a DFE is to process any job or workflow at or above press speed – strive to always have the DFE outpace the press over a shift

14. Maximum efficiency must be exploited in every aspect of the system’s design in order to achieve this goal within reasonable cost constraintsHP T400 Color Inkjet Web Press HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press

15. 18” 12”

16. Each color plane is 32 pixels/mm2 (4096 pixels as shown) 1mm 1mm 1 mm2

18. Higher paper speeds/pages per minute

19. Higher resolution (2x resolution = 4x raster size)It’s a solved problem, isn’t it?

21. Better data mining techniques

23. Expanding out of general design practice for books, publication, POD, print-for-pay and general commercial print

25. This is transparency …

26. And this …

27. And this

29. Define which sets of pages go together in a hierarchical structure

30. E.g. as components that will be supplied to a single direct mail recipient

32. Sheer data volume required to drive current and future digital production pressesDoesn’t PDF/VT fix the problem?

36. Parallelism – End-to-End Solution Press controllers deliver to presses Split into page ranges and assign to RIPs RIPs deliver data in parallel to press controllers Split files into multiple “partitions” or chunks and process in parallel Parallelize early, maintain multiple parallel pipelines Parallelize in pre-RIP, where the data is much smaller (1/7th the size) Process multiple jobs in parallel Different variations optimize first-page-out, engine loading or throughput

38. Multiple cores per CPU

39. Multiple physical disks per machine

40. Multiple physical disks per logical disk

41. Multiple (teamed/bonded) network interfaces per logical network connection

42. Multiple RIPs per machine

43. Multiple threads per RIPParallelism – Within a Machine We invest effort to take advantage of all of these machine-level parallelisms:

44. Digital printing architectures need careful design Many different strategies must be employed in unison for the best effect Key architectural considerations can help guide your efforts Selection of the best components and supplier/partners is an important aspect The ultimate goal is to reduce cost, power, and cooling for customers Summary

45. Q&A More information at www.globalgraphics.com/imiconf