Michael Abrash Programmer and technical writer Date of Birth: . Country: USA

1. Early Career as a Game Programmer
2. Building a Reputation as a Technical Writer
3. Return to the Gaming Industry with Microsoft and id Software
4. Pixomatic and Intel Larrabee Architecture
5. Joining Valve and Oculus VR
6. Continued Technical Writing

Early Career as a Game Programmer

Michael Abrash began his career as a game programmer in the early days of the IBM PC. His first commercial game was Space Strike, released in 1982. He collaborated with Dan Illowsky, who had previously written "Snack Attack" for the Apple II, on several games, including "Cosmic Crusader" (1982), "Big Top" (1983), and "Snack Attack II."

Building a Reputation as a Technical Writer

After his initial success as a game programmer, Abrash transitioned to technical writing. His 1990 book, "Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge," became a seminal work in the field of code optimization. He followed up with another book, "Zen of Graphics Programming," which further explored the art of writing efficient code.

Return to the Gaming Industry with Microsoft and id Software

Abrash rejoined the video game industry in the mid-1990s, working on graphics and assembly language for Windows NT 3.1 at Microsoft. He later joined id Software to work on Quake, contributing to Doom as well. His experiences at Quake served as the basis for his book, "Ramblings in Realtime," published in Dr. Dobb's Journal.

Pixomatic and Intel Larrabee Architecture

After Quake's release, Abrash returned to Microsoft, where he worked on natural language recognition and the Xbox team. In 2002, he joined RAD Game Tools and co-created Pixomatic, a DirectX 7-level rendering software used in Unreal Tournament 2004. Intel acquired Pixomatic in 2005. While at Pixomatic, Abrash and Mike Sartain designed the Larrabee architecture, now used by Intel in their GPGPU technology.

Joining Valve and Oculus VR

In 2011, Abrash joined Valve. He left in 2014 to join virtual reality hardware company Oculus VR, where he reunited with former id Software colleague John Carmack.

Continued Technical Writing

Throughout his career, Abrash has authored numerous articles for "Programmer's Journal," which were later collected into the book "Power Graphics Programming." His "Zen of Assembly Language" series explored the principles of efficient assembly code writing, and "Zen of Code Optimization" expanded on these ideas. "Graphics Programming Black Book" contained a collection of his articles and work on the Quake graphics engine.