Provided is a print engine pipeline subsystem of a printer controller. The subsystem includes a print engine pipeline controller for reading and writing print engine pipeline registers, and a contone decoder unit for expanding JPEG compressed continuous tone (“contone”) layers. Also included are a lossless bi-level decoder for expanding compressed bi-level layers, a line loader unit for expanding page images for a printhead, and a printhead interface for sending dot data to the printhead and for providing line synchronization between multiple printer controllers.