American writer, engineer and scientist (1951–2018)
"Timothy May" redirects here. For the Australian cricketer, see
Tim May.
Timothy C. May, better known as Tim May (December 21, 1951 – December 13, 2018) was an American technical and political writer, and electronic engineer and senior scientist at
Intel.[1] May was also the founder of the
crypto-anarchist movement.[2] He retired from Intel in 1986 at age 35 and died of natural causes at his home on December 13, 2018 at age 66.[3]
Discovery of alpha particle effects on computer chips
As an engineer, May was most noted for having identified the cause of the "
alpha particle problem", which was affecting the reliability of
integrated circuits as device features reached a critical size where a single
alpha particle could change the state of a stored value and cause a
single event upset. May realized that the
ceramic packaging that Intel was using, made from
clay, was very slightly
radioactive.[4][5] Intel solved the issue by increasing the charge in each cell to reduce its susceptibility to radiation[6] and adopting
plastic packaging for their products.[citation needed]
May co-authored the 1981
IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award-winning paper "Alpha-Particle-Induced Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories", published in the
IEEETransactions on Electron Devices in January 1979 with Murray H. Woods.[7]
He was a founding member of, and had been one of the most voluminous contributors to, the
Cypherpunkselectronic mailing list. He wrote extensively on cryptography and privacy from the 1990s through 2003.
May wrote a substantial cypherpunk-themed
FAQ, "The Cyphernomicon" (incorporating his earlier piece "The
Crypto Anarchist Manifesto");[11] and his essay, "True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy", was included in a reprint of
Vernor Vinge's novel True Names. In 2001 his work was published in the book, Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias.[12]
May led a reclusive life. His New York Times obituary noted: "He often wrote about arming himself and waiting for government agents to show up. After the Cypherpunks faded in the early 2000s, he began expressing racist sentiments to other online groups".[3]