About cookies on this site Our websites require some cookies to function properly (required). In addition, other cookies may be used with your consent to analyze site usage, improve the user experience and for advertising. For more information, please review your options. By visiting our website, you agree to our processing of information as described in IBM’sprivacy statement. To provide a smooth navigation, your cookie preferences will be shared across the IBM web domains listed here.
Publication
Jerusalem Conference on Information Technology 1990
Conference paper
Deadlock-avoidance in a page-parallel batch rasterizer
Abstract
A rasterizer converts a document described in some page-description language into a sequence of full-page bitmaps (pagemaps), which can then be printed or displayed. The page-parallel rasterizer harnesses multiple processors to work on the same document. Any given page, however, is processed by a single processor, hence the name. For performance reasons, it is desirable to permit out-of-order rasterization. However, this can result in deadlock. It is shown how to pace the rasterizer so as to avoid deadlock without being overly restrictive. To do this, previously-proposed deadlock-avoidance schemes are extended to cases that seem to be outside their scope. The approach may also be useful in other applications.