Michael David May (born 24 February 1951) is a British

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

working primarily in the fields of computer architecture,

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. ...

and

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

. He is a Professor in the

Department of Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to applied disciplines (including the design and ...

at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

and founder of XMOS Semiconductor, serving until February 2014 as the chief technology officer. May is one of the few individuals who have led the design of a

CPU architecture In computer science and computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a mo ...

, an

interconnect In telecommunications, interconnection is the physical linking of a carrier's network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network. The term may refer to a connection between a carrier's facilities and the equipment belonging to its ...

and a modern era

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

. In addition to his work on parallel-computing microprocessors, he is particularly well known for his work on memory management and compiler development. He was lead architect for the pioneering parallel microprocessr, the

transputer The transputer is a series of pioneering microprocessors from the 1980s, intended for parallel computing. To support this, each transputer had its own integrated memory and serial communication links to exchange data with other transputers. ...

. As of 2024, he holds 56 patents in areas including

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

multi-processing Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. Ther ...

and

communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics (computer science), sem ...

Early life and education

May was born in

Holmfirth Holmfirth () is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. It is located south of Huddersfield and west of Barnsley; the boundary of the Peak District National Park is to the south-west. The town is sited on t ...

, Yorkshire, England and attended

Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield Queen Elizabeth Grammar School (QEGS) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school (day school, no boarding) for boys in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. The school was founded by Royal Charter of Elizabeth I of England, Queen Elizabet ...

. From 1969 to 1972, he was a student at

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, at first studying Mathematics and then Computer Science in the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory, now the

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. it employed 56 faculty members, 45 support staff, 105 research staff, and about 205 researc ...

. At Cambridge, May learned computer architecture design from David Wheeler, who worked on

EDSAC The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Universit ...

and pioneered the use of subroutines. He learned compiler writing from

Martin Richards Martin Richards may refer to: * Martin Richards (computer scientist) Martin Richards (born 21 July 1940) is a British computer scientist known for his development of the BCPL programming language which is both part of early research into porta ...

, who developed

BCPL BCPL ("Basic Combined Programming Language") is a procedural, imperative, and structured programming language. Originally intended for writing compilers for other languages, BCPL is no longer in common use. However, its influence is still f ...

, the programming language that laid down the foundations for

C (programming language) C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...

Career and research

Academic

May moved to the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

and started research in

. The challenges of implementing sensing and control systems led him to design and implement an early

concurrent programming language Concurrent computing is a form of computing in which several computations are executed ''Concurrency (computer science), concurrently''—during overlapping time periods—instead of ''sequentially—''with one completing before the next starts. ...

, EPL, which ran on a cluster of single-board

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

s connected by

serial communication In telecommunication and data transmission, serial communication is the process of sending data one bit at a time, sequentially, over a communication channel or computer bus. This is in contrast to parallel communication, where several bits a ...

links. This early work brought him into contact with his long-term collaborator, the influential computer scientist

Tony Hoare Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (; born 11 January 1934), also known as C. A. R. Hoare, is a British computer scientist who has made foundational contributions to programming languages, algorithms, operating systems, formal verification, and ...

, and

Iann Barron Iann Marchant Barron (16 June 1936 – 16 May 2022) was a British computer engineer and entrepreneur. Biography During vacation work in 1956–57 at Elliott Brothers while still at Cambridge he designed the Elliott 803. On leaving Universit ...

, one of the founders of

Inmos Inmos International plc (trademark INMOS) and two operating subsidiaries, Inmos Limited (UK) and Inmos Corporation (US), was a British semiconductor company founded by Iann Barron, Richard Petritz, and Paul Schroeder in July 1978. Inmos Limited ...

. In 1995, May became Head of the Computer Science Department at the

. He introduced new degree programmes that included entrepreneurial activity, leading to multiple student start-ups, and he was influential in setting up the

Bristol Robotics Laboratory The Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), established in 2005, is the largest academic centre for multi-disciplinary robotics research in the UK. It is the result of a collaboration between the University of Bristol and the University of the West of ...

. He held the Head of Department post until 2005, when he became co-founder and CTO of a new semiconductor company XMOS. He continues to be a professor at Bristol, working in the areas of computer architecture and

s, particularly with applications to

internet of things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

and

edge computing Edge computing is a distributed computing model that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data. More broadly, it refers to any design that pushes computation physically closer to a user, so as to reduce the Latency (engineer ...

Semiconductor industry and entrepreneurship

Inmos

was formed in 1978 with a £50m investment from the UK government. May joined to work on microcomputer architecture, becoming lead architect of the

: the first microprocessor designed for parallel and

distributed computing Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commu ...

. The transputer has been used primarily for massively parallel supercomputing, digital image processing, scientific computing (particularly high energy physics), robotics, as well as military applications. The transputer processor has been used in over 1 billion units worldwide. Alongside the transputer, May designed the associated programming language Occam. This extended his earlier work and was also influenced by

, who was at the time working on CSP and acting as a consultant to Inmos. Occam can be used as a hardware specification language. Working closely with

and the

Programming Research Group The Programming Research Group (PRG) was part of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (OUCL) in Oxford, England, along with the Numerical Analysis Group, until OUCL became the Department of Computer Science in 2011. The PRG was founded by ...

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

, May introduced formal verification techniques into the design of the T800

floating point unit A floating-point unit (FPU), numeric processing unit (NPU), colloquially math coprocessor, is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multipli ...

and the T9000 transputer. These were some of the earliest uses of

formal verification In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics. Formal ver ...

in microprocessor design, involving specifications, correctness preserving transformations and

model checking In computer science, model checking or property checking is a method for checking whether a finite-state model of a system meets a given specification (also known as correctness). This is typically associated with hardware or software syst ...

, giving rise to the initial version of the FDR checker developed at Oxford. May initiated the design of one of the first VLSI

packet switch In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into short messages in fixed format, i.e. '' packets,'' that are transmitted over a digital network. Packets consist of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used b ...

es, the C104, together with the communications system of the T9000 transputer. May's work is particularly influential in communication and networking. For example, the standard

IEEE 1355 IEEE Standard 1355-1995, IEC 14575, or ISO 14575 is a data communications standard for Heterogeneous Interconnect (HIC). IEC 14575 is a low-cost, low latency, scalable serial interconnection system, originally intended for communication between la ...

derives from the transputer's network interface and underpins

SpaceWire SpaceWire is a spacecraft communication network based in part on the IEEE 1355 standard of communications. It is coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with international space agencies including NASA, JAXA, and RKA. ...

, a spacecraft communication network used by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 in the context of European ...

, and many others, with applications including the

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, Lis ...

(JWST). Inmos was acquired by

Thorn EMI Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. Created when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI in October 1979, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituen ...

and then

STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics Naamloze vennootschap, NV (commonly referred to as ST or STMicro) is a European multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. ...

, which has become the largest semiconductor company in Europe.

XMOS Semiconductor

In 2005, May co-founded

XMOS XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company that develops audio products and multicore microcontrollers. The company uses artificial intelligence and other sensors in the platforms that it develops. It creates voice interface technology developme ...

- a fabless semiconductor company that makes software-defined, customisable silicon for applications in the consumer, industrial and automotive sectors - with Ali Dixon, James Foster, Noel Hurley, and Hitesh MehtaS. It has raised over $60m with investors including

Amadeus Capital Partners Dame Anne Margaret Glover (born 6 February 1954) is CEO and co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in European high-technology companies. Career Prior to founding Amadeus in 1997, she was with Apax Partn ...

, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH,

Huawei Technologies Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology companyin Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include telecommunications equipme ...

Xilinx Inc Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company is renowned for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It also pioneered ...

, Harbert European Growth Capital and

Infineon Infineon Semiconductor solutions is the largest microcontroller manufacturer in the world, as well as Germany's largest semiconductor manufacturer. It is also the leading automotive semiconductor manufacturer globally. Infineon had roughly 58,0 ...

. May was CTO until 2014 and remains on the advisory board.

Expert and advisory work

May has been involved in a number of additional semiconductor companies; for example, he wrote the original instruction set for

Picochip Picochip was a venture-backed fabless semiconductor company based in Bath, England, founded in 2000. In January 2012 Picochip was acquired by Mindspeed Technologies, Inc and subsequently by Intel. The company was active in two areas, with two dis ...

(acquired by Mindspeed Technologies, Inc and subsequently by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

). May also acts as an Expert Witness in Intellectual Property litigation.

May's law

May's Law states, in reference to

Moore's Law Moore's law is the observation that the Transistor count, number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and Forecasting, projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of ...

Awards and honours

Royal Fellowships

May is a Fellow of

The Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

, elected in 1991, for his contributions to computer architecture and parallel computing. He is also a Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

, elected in 2010.

Prizes and honours

May received an Honorary DSc from the

University of Southampton The University of Southampton (abbreviated as ''Soton'' in post-nominal letters) is a public university, public research university in Southampton, England. Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universit ...

in 1990. He was awarded the

Clifford Paterson Medal and Prize The Clifford Paterson Medal and Prize is awarded by the Institute of Physics. It was established in 1981 and named after Clifford Copland Paterson. The prize is awarded each year for exceptional early career contributions to the application of p ...

of the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

in 1992, for contributions to the application of physics in an industrial or commercial context.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:May, David Academics of the University of Bristol Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Alumni of the University of Warwick British computer scientists British chief technology officers Computer designers Computer hardware engineers Formal methods people Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering History of computing in the United Kingdom 1951 births Living people People educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield