Tom Duff

Thomas Douglas Selkirk Duff ( born December 8, 1952 in Toronto, Ontario ) is a Canadian programmer. He grew up in Toronto and Leaside (Ontario). In 1974 he received his degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo and two years later he made ​​another degree in mathematics at the University of Toronto.

Career

Tom Duff worked at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab and at the Mark Williams Company in Chicago, later in the Lucasfilm Computer Research and Development Division. While he was employed at Bell Labs Computing Science Research Center, he developed the "rc " shell for the ( Unix-like ) Plan 9 operating system. Since 1996, Duff worked at Pixar Animation Studios. According to him and Thomas Porter, the Porter - Duff composition is a method for digital image overlay named.

Honors

• While he was working at Lucasfilm, he invented the Duff's Device, a mechanism for runtime optimization of a certain type of loop in the C programming language

• On 22 August 2006, developed by Tom Duff and Robert L. Cook method called "Shot shading method and apparatus " in turn, Pixar was patented in the United States.

• On 31 October 2006 a also developed by Tom Duff and Robert L. Cook method called "Shot rendering method and apparatus " at Pixar was patented in the United States.

Quotes

" Dynamic libraries are the work of the devil, the only sure sign that the apocalypse is coming "