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Pixar Image Computer
The Pixar Image Computer is a graphics computer originally developed by the Graphics Group, the computer division of Lucasfilm, which was later renamed Pixar. Aimed at commercial and scientific high-end visualization markets, such as medicine, geophysics and meteorology, the original machine was advanced for its time, but sold poorly. History Creation When George Lucas recruited people from NYIT in 1979 to start their Computer Division, the group was set to develop digital optical printing, digital audio, digital non-linear editing and computer graphics. Computer graphics quality was just not good enough due to technological limitations at the time. The team then decided to solve the problem by starting a hardware project, building what they would call the Pixar Image Computer, a machine with more computational power that was able to produce images with higher resolution. Availability About three months after their acquisition by Steve Jobs on February 3, 1986, the computer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, California, United States. Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is another studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Pixar started in 1979 as part of the Lucasfilm computer division, known as the Graphics Group, before its spin-off as a corporation in 1986, with funding from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in January 2006 at a valuation of $7.4+ billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock. Pixar is best known for its feature films, technologically powered by RenderMan, the company's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan Interface Specification image-rendering API. The studio's mascot is Luxo Jr., a desk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital-to-analog Converter
In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC, D/A, D2A, or D-to-A) is a system that converts a digital signal into an analog signal. An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) performs the reverse function. There are several DAC architectures; the suitability of a DAC for a particular application is determined by figures of merit including: resolution, maximum sampling frequency and others. Digital-to-analog conversion can degrade a signal, so a DAC should be specified that has insignificant errors in terms of the application. DACs are commonly used in music players to convert digital data streams into analog audio signals. They are also used in televisions and mobile phones to convert digital video data into analog video signals. These two applications use DACs at opposite ends of the frequency/resolution trade-off. The audio DAC is a low-frequency, high-resolution type while the video DAC is a high-frequency low- to medium-resolution type. Due to the complexity a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Studio; it also operated under the names the Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before changing its name to the Walt Disney Company in 1986. Early on, the company established itself as a leader in the animation industry, with the creation of the widely popular character Mickey Mouse, who is the company's mascot, and the start of animated films. After becoming a major success by the early 1940s, the company started to diversify into live-action films, television, and theme parks in the 1950s. Following Walt's death in 1966, the company's profits began to decline, especially in the animation division. Once Disney's shareholders voted in Michael Eisner as the he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walt Disney Animation Studios
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, ''Steamboat Willie'' (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney, it is the oldest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 61 feature films, from '' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' (1937) to '' Strange World'' (2022), and hundreds of short films. The animation studio (and its parent company) indirectly takes its name from Isigny-sur-Mer, in Calvados, Normandy, France, where Disney's ancestors were based there for a few years. Founded as D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VAX-11/780
The VAX-11 is a discontinued family of 32-bit superminicomputers, running the Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) instruction set architecture (ISA), developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Development began in 1976. In addition to being powerful machines in their own right, they also offer the additional ability to run user mode PDP-11 code (thus the -11 in VAX-11), offering an upward compatible path for existing customers. The first machine in the series, the VAX-11/780, was announced in October 1977. Its former competitors in the minicomputer space, like Data General and Hewlett-Packard, were unable to successfully respond to the introduction and rapid update of the VAX design. DEC followed the VAX-11/780 with the lower-cost 11/750, and the even lower cost 11/730 and 11/725 models in 1982. More powerful models, initially known as the VAX-11/790 and VAX-11/795, were instead rebranded as the VAX 8600 series. The VAX-11 line was discontinued in 1988, havin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VAX Unit Of Performance
The VAX Unit of Performance, or VUP for short, is an obsolete measurement of computer performance used by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). 1 VUP was equivalent to the performance of a VAX 11/780 completing a given task. Other VAX machines and later workstation designs were compared in performance terms by defining system speed in VUPs, for instance, the VAXft Model 310 ran at 3.8 VUPs, meaning it ran roughly 3.8 times as fast as the 11/780. The term was used largely within the DEC and its community, and fell from use as more standard ratings like SPEC became more widely used. This was especially true with the introduction of DEC workstations running Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ..., in which case the VUP was of little use comparing the platforms to comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. Initially intended for use inside the Bell System, AT&T licensed Unix to outside parties in the late 1970s, leading to a variety of both academic and commercial Unix variants from vendors including University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD), Microsoft (Xenix), Sun Microsystems (SunOS/Solaris (operating system), Solaris), Hewlett-Packard, HP/Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE (HP-UX), and IBM (IBM AIX, AIX). In the early 1990s, AT&T sold its rights in Unix to Novell, which then sold the UNIX trademark to The Open Group, an industry consortium founded in 1996. The Open Group allows the use of the mark for certified operating systems that comply with the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). Unix systems are chara ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpha Channel
In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate passes or layers and then combine the resulting 2D images into a single, final image called the composite. Compositing is used extensively in film when combining computer-rendered image elements with live footage. Alpha blending is also used in 2D computer graphics to put rasterized foreground elements over a background. In order to combine the picture elements of the images correctly, it is necessary to keep an associated ''matte'' for each element in addition to its color. This matte layer contains the coverage information—the shape of the geometry being drawn—making it possible to distinguish between parts of the image where something was drawn and parts that are empty. Although the most basic operation of combining two images is t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SIMD
Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD can be internal (part of the hardware design) and it can be directly accessible through an instruction set architecture (ISA), but it should not be confused with an ISA. SIMD describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data points simultaneously. Such machines exploit data level parallelism, but not concurrency: there are simultaneous (parallel) computations, but each unit performs the exact same instruction at any given moment (just with different data). SIMD is particularly applicable to common tasks such as adjusting the contrast in a digital image or adjusting the volume of digital audio. Most modern CPU designs include SIMD instructions to improve the performance of multimedia use. SIMD has three different subcategories in Flynn's 1972 Taxonomy, one of which is SIMT. SIMT should not be confused with software thr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RGBA Color Space
RGBA stands for red green blue alpha. While it is sometimes described as a color space, it is actually a three-channel RGB color model supplemented with a fourth ''alpha channel''. Alpha indicates how opaque each pixel is and allows an image to be combined over others using alpha compositing, with transparent areas and anti-aliasing of the edges of opaque regions. The term does ''not'' define what RGB color space is being used. It also does not state whether or not the colors are premultiplied by the alpha value, and if they are it does not state what color space that premultiplication was done in. This means more information than just "RGBA" is needed to determine how to handle an image. In some contexts the abbreviation "RGBA" means a specific memory layout (called RGBA8888 below), with other terms such as "BGRA" used for alternatives. In other contexts "RGBA" means any layout. Representation In computer graphics, pixels encoding the RGBA color space information must be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chapter 11
Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most prominently used by corporate entities. In contrast, Chapter 7 governs the process of a liquidation bankruptcy, though liquidation may also occur under Chapter 11; while Chapter 13 provides a reorganization process for the majority of private individuals. Chapter 11 overview When a business is unable to service its debt or pay its creditors, the business or its creditors can file with a federal bankruptcy court for protection under either Chapter 7 or Chapter 11. In Chapter 7, the business ceases operations, a trustee sells all of its assets, and then distributes the proceeds to its creditors. Any residual amount is returned to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin Catmull
Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist who is the co-founder of Pixar and was the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics (computer science), computer graphics, including the 2019 Turing Award, ACM Turing Award. Early life Edwin Catmull was born on March 31, 1945, in Parkersburg, West Virginia. His family later moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where his father first served as principal of Granite High School (Utah), Granite High School and then of Taylorsville High School. Early in his life, Catmull found inspiration in Walt Disney Pictures, Disney movies, including ''Peter Pan (1953 film), Peter Pan'' and ''Pinocchio (1940 film), Pinocchio'', and wanted to be an animator; however, after finishing high school, he had no idea how to get there as there were no animation schools around that time. Because he also liked math and physics, he chose a scientific career instead. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
