Tom Duff
Encyclopedia
Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk
Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk was a Scottish peer. He was born at Saint Mary's Isle, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. He was noteworthy as a Scottish philanthropist who sponsored immigrant settlements in Canada at the Red River Colony.- Early background :Douglas was the seventh son of Dunbar...
) is a computer programmer. He was born in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and grew up in Toronto and Leaside. In 1974 he graduated from the University of Waterloo
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo is a comprehensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles, and has since grown to an institution of more than 30,000 students, faculty, and staff...
with a B.Math and, two years later, got an M.Sc. from the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
.
Career
Duff worked at the New York Institute of TechnologyNew York Institute of Technology
New York Institute of Technology is a private, non-sectarian, co-educational research university in New York City. NYIT has five schools and two colleges, all with a strong emphasis on technology and applied scientific research...
Computer Graphics Lab and the Mark Williams Company
Mark Williams Company
The Mark Williams Company was a small software company in Chicago, Illinois that created Coherent, one of the first Unix-like operating systems for IBM PCs and several C programming language compilers. It was founded by Robert Swartz in 1980 and discontinued operations in 1995...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
before moving to Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
's Computer Research and Development Division. He and Thomas Porter, another Lucasfilm employee, developed a new approach to compositing images
Alpha compositing
In computer graphics, alpha compositing is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render image elements in separate passes, and then combine the resulting multiple 2D images into a single, final image in a...
; their 1984 paper, "Compositing Digital Images",
is "[t]he seminal work on an algebra for image compositing", according to Keith Packard
Keith Packard
Keith Packard is a software developer, best known for his work on the X Window System.Packard is responsible for many X extensions and technical papers on X...
.
and "Porter-Duff compositing" is now a key technique in computer graphics. (See, for example, XRender
XRender
The X Rendering Extension is an X Window System extension to implement Porter-Duff image compositing in the X server, to allow efficient display of transparent images.- History :...
and Glitz
Glitz (software)
Glitz is a software library for 2D graphics which provides hardware acceleration using OpenGL, an API for 3D graphics. Glitz is open-source software, licensed under the MIT License...
.)
Duff later worked for 12 years at Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
Computing Science Research Center, where he worked on computer graphics, wireless networking, and Plan 9; in the course of the latter work, he authored the well known "rc" shell
Unix shell
A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...
for the Plan 9
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system. It was developed primarily for research purposes as the successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002...
operating system.
Duff has worked at Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
since 1996.
Achievements
- In 1995 he was awarded (with others) the Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for his work on digital image compositing. With Bill ReevesWilliam ReevesWilliam "Bill" Reeves is a pioneer in the field of computer graphics. He was the technical director who worked with John Lasseter on the animation breakthrough shorts: Luxo Jr and The Adventures of André and Wally B.....
he designed the first version of Pixar'sPixarPixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
MarionetteMarionette (software)Marionette is the proprietary software developed and used in-house by Pixar Animation Studios in the animation of their movies and shorts. Marionette is not available for sale and is only used by Pixar...
3-D animation system, which won the same award in 1997.
- While working at Lucasfilm, he created Duff's deviceDuff's deviceIn computer science, Duff's device is an optimized implementation of a serial copy that uses a technique widely applied in assembly language for loop unwinding. Its discovery is credited to Tom Duff in November of 1983, who at the time was working for Lucasfilm. It is perhaps the most dramatic...
, a loop-unrolling mechanism in CC (programming language)C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
.
- On August 22, 2006, the United States Patent and Trademark OfficeUnited States Patent and Trademark OfficeThe United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
issued to PixarPixarPixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
for a "Shot shading method and apparatus" invented by Tom Duff and Robert L. CookRobert L. CookRobert L. Cook is a computer graphics researcher and developer, and the co-creator of the RenderMan rendering software. Cook was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and educated at Duke University and Cornell University. While at Cornell, Cook worked with Donald P. Greenberg. He is now Vice President of...
.
- On October 31, 2006, the United States Patent and Trademark OfficeUnited States Patent and Trademark OfficeThe United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
issued to PixarPixarPixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
for a "Shot rendering method and apparatus" invented by Tom Duff and Robert L. CookRobert L. CookRobert L. Cook is a computer graphics researcher and developer, and the co-creator of the RenderMan rendering software. Cook was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and educated at Duke University and Cornell University. While at Cornell, Cook worked with Donald P. Greenberg. He is now Vice President of...
.
Quotes
- "Shared libraries are the work of the devil, the one true sign that the apocalypse is at hand."
- "Nobody really knows what the Bourne shell's grammar is. Even examination of the source code is little help."
- "π seconds is a nanocentury."
Appearances
- Tom Duff makes a cameo appearanceCameo appearanceA cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
in the NivenLarry NivenLaurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
/PournelleJerry PournelleJerry Eugene Pournelle is an American science fiction writer, essayist and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog....
science fiction novel FootfallFootfallFootfall is a 1985 science fiction novel written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It was nominated for the both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1986, and was a No...
as a co-discoverer of the invading spaceship: "Chap named Tom Duff, a computer type, spotted it." - Tom Duff appears briefly in the documentary film "Noisy People" (dir Tim PerkisTim PerkisTim Perkis is an experimental musician who works with live electronic and computer sound.He has founded or played in live computer network bands such as the...
, 2006) playing the banjo.
External links
- Tom Duff (short cv on family web site)
- iq0 (personal web site)
- rc - The Plan 9 Shell
- A Quick Introduction to the Plan 9 Panel Library, a GUI toolkit by Tom Duff
- Tom Duff "Viral Attacks On UNIX System Security", AT&T 11273-880728-02TMS, August 1987