A Boulder, Colorado company, Raster Image Processing Systems Inc, has developed a reduced instruction set microprocessor that uses a PostScript-compatible page description language and, claims the company, can significantly boost laser printer performance, reports Microbytes Daily. The processor, designed to replace the usual 68020 or 68000 controller, is clocked at 8MHz and runs at 10 RISC MIPS, according to the company. It is currently available as an add-in board for MS-DOS micros and as a controller board for installing inside the laser printer. Raster Image says that a printer using its chip would show a remarkable 30-to-one performance improvement over a standard laser printer using Adobe Systems’ PostScript. The RISC has been optimised for graphic bit handling and the instruction set has been designed so that only single instructions are needed to execute many operations that would require multiple instructions on a Motorola 68020. The processor executes all instructions except for multiply and divide in a single clock cycle, the company says. According to the McGraw-Hill newswire, Raster Image claims that there has been tremendous interest in the company and in its processor and several companies are already reportedly using it.
