Michael Abrash is an American programmer and technical writer. He has written dozens of magazine articles and multiple books on code optimization and software-rendered graphics for IBM PC compatibles. He worked at id Software in the mid-1990s on the rendering technology for Quake. He later wrote the Pixomatic software renderer for RAD Game Tools. Since 2014, he has been the chief scientist of Oculus VR, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms. He followed it with Cosmic Crusader (1982) and Big Top (1983), both published by Funtastic. Working with Dan Illowsky, who had previously programmed the Apple II Pac-Man clone Snack Attack, he co-wrote Snack Attack II (1982) for the IBM PC. After Quake was released, Abrash returned to Microsoft to work on natural language research, then moved to the Xbox team until 2001.
In 2002, Abrash went to RAD Game Tools where he co-wrote the Pixomatic software renderer, which emulates the functionality of a DirectX 7-level graphics card. At the end of 2005, Pixomatic was acquired by Intel. When developing Pixomatic, he and Mike Sartain designed a new architecture called Larrabee, which now is part of Intel's GPGPU project.
Gabe Newell, managing director of Valve, said that he had "been trying to hire Michael Abrash forever. [...] About once a quarter we go for dinner and I say 'are you ready to work here yet? In 2011 Abrash joined Valve.
On March 28, 2014, three days after Facebook announced agreements to purchase the virtual reality headset company, Oculus VR published a statement saying that Michael Abrash had joined their company as Chief Scientist. This reunited him with id Software's John Carmack, who was chief technology officer there at the time.
Technical writer
Michael Abrash was a columnist in the 1980s for the magazine Programmer's Journal. The articles were collected in the 1989 book, Power Graphics Programming. His second book, Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge (1990),
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External links
- Ramblings in Valve Time - A blog by Michael Abrash (archived)
- Ramblings in Realtime by Michael Abrash, detailed description of Quake graphics engine programming (PDF version)
- Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (HTML version and ebook source)
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- Another source of his Graphics Programming Black Book
- Byte.com's copy of 'Graphics Programming' (Active February 2008)
- [http://www.phatcode.net/res/224/files/html/index.html]
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- "40 minutes with Michael Abrash of Valve Software", Audio interview with Michael Abrash at QuakeCon 2012 discussing Abrash's career and work at Valve