Jarosław Duda (
Polish pronunciation: ), also known as Jarek Duda, is a Polish
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
and an
assistant professor at the Institute of Computer Science and Computational Mathematics of the
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
in
Kraków. He is known as the inventor of
asymmetric numeral systems (ANS), a family of
entropy encoding methods widely used in
data compression.
Life and career
He was born in
Dębica
Dębica (; yi, דעמביץ ''Dembitz'') is a town in southeastern Poland with 44,692 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the capital of Dębica County. Since 1999 it has been situated in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it had previously been in ...
,
Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland. In 1999, he graduated from King Władysław Jagiełło High School No. 1 in Dębica. In 2004, he obtained an
MSc
MSC may refer to:
Computers
* Message Sequence Chart
* Microelectronics Support Centre of UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
* MIDI Show Control
* MSC Malaysia (formerly known as Multimedia Super Corridor)
* USB mass storage device class (USB MSC ...
degree in computer science, in 2005 in pure mathematics, in 2006 in physics, all from the
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
in Kraków. In 2010, he obtained a
Doctor of Philosophy degree in
theoretical computer science, then in 2012 doctorate in
theoretical physics from the same university. In 2013, he received a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the NSF Center for Science of Information of the
Purdue University at the invitation from
Wojciech Szpankowski.
In 2015, he was appointed an assistant professor at the Institute of Computer Science and Computational Mathematics of the Jagiellonian University.
Invention of ANS
Between 2006 and 2014 he developed a family of
entropy coding methods called
asymmetric numeral systems, mainly used in
data compression, which has become widely used in electronic devices due to improved performance compared to previous methods. ANS combines the compression ratio of
arithmetic coding (which uses a nearly accurate
probability distribution
In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon i ...
), with a processing cost similar to that of
Huffman coding. In the tabled ANS (tANS) variant, this is achieved by constructing a
finite-state machine to operate on a large alphabet without using multiplication. ANS is used in many products of leading technology companies such as
Apple,
Facebook,
Google, and
Linux, for example to encode information in
Facebook Zstandard,
Apple LZFSE,
CRAM
Cram may refer to:
* Cram (surname), a surname, and list of notable persons having the surname
* Cram.com, a website for creating and sharing flashcards
* Cram (Australian game show), a television show
* ''Cram'' (game show), a TV game show that ...
or
JPEG XL popular data compressors.
Duda's intention has been to keep ANS patent-free and available for public use. In 2018, his lobbying helped convince Google to abandon its ANS-related patent claim in the US and Europe. However, in 2022,
Microsoft received a US patent covering modifications to a data-encoding technique called rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System, introduced by Duda in 2013.
[J. Duda]
''Asymmetric numeral systems: entropy coding combining speed of Huffman coding with compression rate of arithmetic coding''
arXiv:1311.2540, 2013. In an interview with ''The Register'', Duda raised his concerns about the potential diminished utility of ANS as software developers might try to avoid a potential infringement claim.
Awards
In 2021, he became the recipient of the annual
City of Kraków Award for his exceptional achievements in computer science.
See also
*
List of Polish computer scientists
*
Timeline of Polish science and technology
*
List of Polish inventors and discoverers
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Duda, Jarosław
Living people
Polish computer scientists
Polish inventors
People from Dębica
Jagiellonian University alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)