FPGAs Power New RICOH SP 3600DN Printer Series

Altera Corporation announced that Ricoh Group has chosen Altera Cyclone IV FPGAs to power its newly introduced line of printers, the RICOH SP 3600DN Series. Altera’s Cyclone IV FPGAs power the image processing capability of the RICOH SP 3600 Series printers, helping implement new features such as 1200 dpi image quality improvements, serial print speeds, and fast print speed. In addition, Cyclone IV FPGAs allow Ricoh to significantly reduce overall costs and design time during development.

RICOH SP 3600DN Series printers provide high performance while featuring a compact and modern design effective for general offices and locations with limited space.

“We selected Altera FPGAs rather than application-specific integrated circuits to bring more flexibility, programmability, lower cost, and lower power to this platform and future platforms,” said Naohiko Miyoshi, Group Leader of 3rd Designing Center Imaging Systems Development Division, Ricoh Co., Ltd. “In addition, Altima, Altera’s distributor in Japan, provided excellent technical support that enabled the development of this new printer series.”

“The features Ricoh wanted to focus on are a perfect fit for the cost-effectiveness, low power consumption, and programmability offered by Cyclone FPGAs,” said David Gamba, Director of Computer & Storage Business Unit, Altera. “Altera FPGAs offer a level of flexibility superior to ASICs and enable companies to remain competitive in their markets by delivering their products to market much faster. We are pleased Ricoh has chosen Altera.”

Altera’s low-end product offerings, including Cyclone IV, Cyclone V and MAX® 10 FPGAs, are being widely adopted in the volume markets of printers, digital cameras and multi-functional printers (MFPs). In addition, due to increasing end-of-life risks and non-recurring engineering costs, customers are migrating from microcontroller units (MCUs) and ASICs to low-cost, low-power FPGAs. Offering up to 150K logic elements (LEs), Cyclone IV FPGAs require only two power supplies for operation, simplifying the power distribution network and saving board costs, board space, and design time.