No one has done more to conquer the performance limitations of the PC than Michael Abrash, a software engineer for Microsoft. His complete works are contained in this massive volume, including everything he has written about performance coding and real-time graphics. The CD-ROM contains the entire text in Adobe Acrobat 3.0 format, allowing fast searches for specific facts.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book is a collection of the author's previous books on assembly language and graphics programming, as well as past columns for Dr. Dobb's magazine. Though much of the book (such as 8088/286/386 assembly language optimization and VGA graphics programming) is out-of-date by now, the reader can see some of the larger tendencies in the author's work over the years--a reliance on profiling in order to test code, and creative thinking to improve performance wherever possible. This text features assembler optimization for a variety of problems including searching algorithms, and records the author's approaches to optimizing code for the evolving line of Intel CPUs, from the 8088 on to the early Pentium lines. The last few chapters of this book are more relevant, and include a series of explorations of some of the technology behind the popular Doom and Quake 3-D games by id Corporation (where the author worked). Optimized solutions to 3-D graphics problems from texture mapping, hidden surface removal, and Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) trees are explained. Current gaming and 3-D technology, such as Direct3D and VRML is left out, but it's clear that game programmers like the author will continue to push the limits of current hardware technology in inventive ways. This book is clearly targeted at game developers and serious assembly language programmers, not for the general reader.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 59 people found the following review helpful
By John Carmack
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you have any interest in programming, you should look at Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book Special Edition. It has just about everything he has written, from the ancient work on optimizing for the 8086 (still interesting to read) to the articles written during quake's development.
I personally learned a lot from Michael's early articles, and I was proud to contribute to the later ones.
John Carmack, id Software
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I don't do any graphics programming and much of the advice in this book is obsolete. Still, writing high-performance assembler and C code is essential to my job, and I can't begin to imagine how to become an expert on performance programming without reading the first portion of this book.
Abrash teaches you how to think like a performance programmer in a way that no one else does. Even the best (and much more current) books on performance programming like Rick Booth's excellent "Inner Loops" can't approach Abrash' skill at imparting the mindset of how one approaches code optimization. No wonder Abrash' earlier books (which are bundled into this one) have names beginning "The Zen of..." Michael Abrash preaches a discipline of constant awareness of the bus, the cache, and the pipeline in a clear and useful fashion. And of course, Test, test, test! Even if you are not a graphics programmer, you will have much to learn about writing tight code and good algorithms from the graphics examples.
Even though the book contains over 1000 pages, the real jewel may be the CD-ROM, which contains the complete text of the long out-of-print classic "Zen of Assembler". It is hard to express how influential a book on 8088(!) programming can be. That book begins by deconstructing a published article on speeding up a program by repeatedly applying optimizations that reduce the cycle count, eventually the cycle count was halved. Despite this, the "optimized" program ran slower than the original, and Abrash clearly explains why.
The chapter on Terje Matheson's wc program tought me more about assembler than any program I have ever looked at. (You can test your skill by rewriting wc to run well on the Pentium II and above. The Pentium code in the book runs into a devastating partial register stall on the newer processors. Then compare your solution to Matheson's latest, which can be found on the internet).
The bottom line is that if you are looking for a cookbook, stay away from this. The shelf-life of performance code samples is too short. On the other hand, if you are interested in really becoming a master of performance programming and are willing to work hard, this book will improve your skills more than you believed possible.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A number of years ago, I was developing an object oriented Ray Tracer for my thesis. I read every book on the subject, but practically none gave any form of advice as to how to render the results of my tracings on an SVGA powered 386.
If only I had this book at hand back then! While today's PCs have grown well beyond VGA, and are largely well catered for via the likes of DirectX etc., this book still presents the base set of knowledge (from 8086 -> Pentium, from VGA -> Acellerated cards) that any programmer involved in the development of graphics oriented software should have.
Combined with Michael's treatment of fast 3d scenery management, texture mapping and lighting models, this book really does become a bible.
But this is not all...
It's not been all that many years since every time Borland released a new compiler that MS would follow (or vice-versa). Dr. Dobbs would then review the two packages and present accurate results as to which compiler generated the fastest or smallest code. How times change!
The relevance to this book is that the first 20 chapters should be read by EVERY hard-core developer: Why are compilers never going to generate code as optimally as a good developer can write assembler? Want to know why your code is not executing at least one instruction every clock cycle? Ever wondered how to time your code effectively? So just how would you optimize a particularly efficient string searching algorithm into a neat 7 instruction operation?
It's all here - one of the most readable exposes onto the nasty features of the 80x8x processor families (why oh why didn't IBM wait for the 680x0?) and how to overcome these problems.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Graphics Programming Black Book and the mindset of programming for...
This book is gold... it also happens to be old. This does not however change the value of the book, the author was addressing the needs of the computer industry for high... Read more
Published on February 20, 2009 by P. Wilson
3.0 out of 5 stars
It was an excellent book but it is getting a little bit old
This book is a monster brick of over 1300 pages with 70 chapters! Do not be misled by the book title because the 22 first chapters, which represents about the third of the 1300... Read more
Published on June 9, 2007 by Olivier Langlois
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is my Bible.
I really want to find that book, I am only wondering how much will it cost. It is a precious bible for me. Read more
Published on April 6, 2004 by Michael Kargas
5.0 out of 5 stars
accessible book -- out of print but not rare
I was a little worried I would need to be a guru to make any sense of this book. Not true. It's pretty accessible and has engaged me right from the beginning. Read more
Published on December 13, 2003 by nerdyguy1618
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good book only somewhat outdated
This book is an exellent reference and good info book. it has tons of info about MODE X (somewhat outdated) 3d stuff and optimizing. Read more
Published on November 24, 1999 by BoomBoX
5.0 out of 5 stars
Killer Book!
This book rocks! It is filled with info on high performance 3D programming. This is for experts only though, and unless you are a die hard graphics programmer, I would not... Read more
Published on October 21, 1999 by Joel Morey
1.0 out of 5 stars
Good Piece Of Written History ...
I learned a lot from Michaels Articles, but this book is just a recycled version of thos articles.
ModeX is outdated for a long time. Read more
Published on October 5, 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book!
a) This book is NOT out of date! Computers will be never fast enough; it means low-level programming can't be out of date (we dont have that luxury of wasting cycles and to reach... Read more
Published on October 4, 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding reference
Though a lot of the book is old asm material, the rest of the book is filled with excellent information on 3d graphics including some pretty advanced concepts. Read more
Published on September 16, 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
10 out of 5 stars!!!
This is a wonderfully interesting book that goes deep into not only the hard code of optimization but also the abstract concepts of it. Read more
Published on July 16, 1999 by The Jester (JesterSks@aol.com)
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