Scalable RIP Quick start

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; and to Harlequin Core but not Harlequin MultiRIP

To invoke HHR as a Scalable RIP simply add the -nrips X and -m M command-line options when invoking clrip, where X is the number of farm RIPs to launch, and M is the amount of memory in MiB to be used among all the farm RIP instances. As an example, on Microsoft Windows, the following command RIPs a job called ThirtyOnePages-01.pdf using two farm RIPs.

cmd.exe

TEXT

                      C:\apps\HHR_SDK_dev> bin\clrip -m 2048 -c CMYKComposite300dpi -nrips 2 C:\T\ThirtyOnePages-01.pdf
                      Initial RIP virtual memory: 5 MiB (4944 KiB) used, 507 MiB (519168 KiB) commit limit, 1024 MiB (1048576 KiB) reserved
                      **** PostScript asserts enabled ****
                      Ripping file %C%T/ThirtyOnePages-01.pdf as PDF.
                      Starting Job On Fri Sep 7 11:36:19 2018
                      Title: Not Available
                      Subject: Not Available Author: John Smith
                      Creator: Microsoft® Word 2016 Producer: Microsoft® Word 2016 CreationDate: D:20170818114113+01'00'
                      ModDate: D:20170818114113+01'00'
                      Trapped: Not Available
                        Scalable RIP Accepted Job 2 On Fri Sep 7 11:36:19 2018 File: %C%T/ThirtyOnePages-01.pdf
                        Config: %configps%CMYKComposite300dpi
                        Priority: 0
                        Scalable RIP Metadata for Job 2 File: %C%T/ThirtyOnePages-01.pdf Pages: 31
                        Chunk Size: 1
                      Scalable RIP Starting Job 2 On Fri Sep 7 11:36:19 2018
                      Total time: 0.106 seconds (00:00:00.106)
                      Job Completed: ThirtyOnePages-01.pdf
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 rendered 3 pages of 31...
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 rendered 9 pages of 31...
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 rendered 15 pages of 31...
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 rendered 21 pages of 31...
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 rendered 27 pages of 31...
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 rendered 31 pages of 31...
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 Schedule time: 22.498 seconds (00:00:22.498)
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 Active time: 6.689 seconds (00:00:06.689)
                      Scalable RIP Job 2 Elapsed time: 6.689 seconds (00:00:06.689) Scalable RIP Job 2 Completed: %C%T/ThirtyOnePages-01.pdf
                      Peak process working set memory: 43008 KiB used Peak process RIP memory: 15208 KiB used
                      C:\apps\HHR_SDK_dev>

In the above example you will see 31 .tif files appear in the C:\T directory representing each page.

We have typically found that the best performance for PDF files is achieved using a chunk size of 1 (see Command-line options for Scalable RIP and as many farm RIPs as cores on the machine. There should be significant performance improvements as the number of farm RIPs increases to an optimum number.