Rashid was born in
Fort Madison, Iowa, and is the son of Farris Rashid and Ramona Wright Rashid. Rashid graduated from
Stanford University in 1974 with degrees in
mathematics and
comparative literature. He then received a
Master of Science and a
Ph.D. in
computer science from the
University of Rochester, finishing in 1980. While at Rochester, he and
Gene Ball wrote what is probably one of the earliest networked multiplayer computer games,
Alto Trek, for
Xerox Alto computers. Before joining Microsoft in 1991, Rashid had been the developer of the
Mach kernel during his tenure as a professor of
computer science at
Carnegie Mellon University. The Mach multiprocessor operating system
kernel developed by Rashid and
Avie Tevanian has had a lasting influence in the design of modern
operating systems, including the design of
Windows NT, and remains at the core of several operating systems such as
NeXTSTEP,
GNU Hurd,
macOS,
iOS,
OSF/1, and
Tru64 UNIX. Rashid has authored a number of patents in areas such as
data compression,
networking, and
operating systems, and was a major developer of
Microsoft's
interactive TV system. He was promoted to vice president in 1994. In 2000, he became senior vice president of
Microsoft. He has 5 children. While a faculty member at CMU, he also performed research and published numerous papers and articles on topics such as networking, operating systems,
artificial intelligence, and
programming languages for
distributed computing applications. ==Awards and honors==