Xerox labs cook up printer with a brain, or make that two brains

Xerox recently demonstrated a dual-engine printer platform that it says will pave the way for future printer designs at the company. The parallel printer architecture, similar to parallel storage and processor architectures that have emerged in recent years, got its start at within the Xerox Innovation Group in Webster, N.Y., and at its Palo Alto Research Center. Printing systems using the platform will boast speed and flexibility improvements over existing models, Xerox says. The system will enable printers to run even if one engine conks out and a “self-aware” technology embedded in the system makes it so that the engines can work together to get print jobs done efficiently, Xerox says. The company says the intellectual property behind the technology complements its other  “smarter document management systems” technologies.