Phil Moorby () was a British

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

and computer scientist. Moorby was born and brought up in Birmingham, England, and studied Mathematics at

Southampton University , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Moorby received his master's degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

from

Manchester University , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

, in 1974. He moved to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

in 1983."Phil Moorby - 2005 Phil Kaufman Award Honoree "
While working in Gateway Design Automation, in 1984 he invented the

Verilog Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits at the register-transfer level of abstraction. It is als ...

hardware description language In computer engineering, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure and behavior of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits. A hardware description language en ...

,SystemVerilog for Design: A Guide to Using SystemVerilog for Hardware Design and Modeling, Stuart Sutherland, Simon Davidmann, Peter Flake, Springer, 2004, p. 358 and developed the first and industry standard simulator Verilog-XL. In 1990 Gateway was purchased by Cadence Design Systems. In 1997, Moorby joined

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...

SynaPix, where he worked on

match moving In visual effects, match moving is a technique that allows the insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion relative to the photographed objects in the shot. The term is used loos ...

and

video tracking Video tracking is the process of locating a moving object (or multiple objects) over time using a camera. It has a variety of uses, some of which are: human-computer interaction, security and surveillance, video communication and compression, au ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

s for automatically extracting

3D models In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of any surface of an object (inanimate or living) in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, an ...

from

video frame In filmmaking, video production, animation, and related fields, a frame is one of the many '' still images'' which compose the complete '' moving picture''. The term is derived from the historical development of film stock, in which the sequenti ...

s, using techniques such as

optical flow Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and a scene. Optical flow can also be defined as the distribution of apparent veloci ...

motion field In computer vision the motion field is an ideal representation of 3D motion as it is projected onto a camera image. Given a simplified camera model, each point (y_, y_) in the image is the projection of some point in the 3D scene but the positio ...

and

point cloud Point or points may refer to: Places * Point, Lewis, a peninsula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland * Point, Texas, a city in Rains County, Texas, United States * Point, the NE tip and a ferry terminal of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland * Poin ...

s. Moorby joined Co-Design Automation in 1999, and in 2002 he joined

Synopsys Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical de ...

to work on

SystemVerilog SystemVerilog, standardized as IEEE 1800, is a hardware description and hardware verification language used to model, design, simulate, test and implement electronic systems. SystemVerilog is based on Verilog and some extensions, and since ...

verification language. On October 10, 2005, Moorby became the recipient of the 2005

Phil Kaufman Award The Phil Kaufman Award was established in 1994 by the EDA Consortium (now the Electronic System Design Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community) to recognize individuals for their impact on electronic design by their contributions to electronic de ...

for his contributions to the

EDA EDA or Eda may refer to: Computing * Electronic design automation * Enterprise Desktop Alliance, a computer technology consortium * Enterprise digital assistant * Estimation of distribution algorithm * Event-driven architecture * Exploratory ...

industry, specifically for development and popularization of Verilog, one of the world's most popular tools of electronic design automation. In April 2016, Moorby was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum, "for his invention and promotion of the Verilog hardware description language." Philip Raymond Moorby passed away on September 15, 2022 at the age of 69 in Rockport, MA.

References

American computer scientists Electronic design automation people People associated with the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-compu-bio-stub