He has written dozens of magazine articles and multiple books on code optimization and software-rendered graphics for IBM PC compatibles.

[2] Abrash started his career in 1982 writing action video games for the IBM PC, which eventually resulted in a 1990 book, Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge, about optimization for the 16-bit 8086 and 8088 processors.

[7] After Quake was released, Abrash returned to Microsoft to work on natural language research, then moved to the Xbox team until 2001.

[8] 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.

When developing Pixomatic, he and Mike Sartain designed a new architecture called Larrabee, which now is part of Intel's GPGPU project.

[2] This reunited him with id Software's John Carmack, who was chief technology officer there at the time.

In the early to mid-1990s, Abrash wrote a column about graphics programming for IBM PC compatibles for Dr. Dobb's Journal called "Ramblings in Realtime."