imec Fellow

Karl Tuyls has spent much of his career asking how intelligent agents learn, cooperate, and make decisions. Now, at imec, that question meets another one: what kind of compute technology will future AI need? After senior research and leadership roles at DeepMind and Meta, Karl joined imec in 2025 as CTO AI and imec fellow.

Another key feature is a backside power delivery network (BSPDN): part of the active devices is powered from the wafer’s backside rather than through conventional frontside power delivery schemes. As such, extreme back-end-of-line (BEOL) pitch patterning will be possible in the tier’s frontside without the constraint of voltage drop on the power supplies.

As such, semi-damascene can become the next inflection point for BEOL fabrication. It has an excellent value proposition, not only in terms of resistance, capacitance, and area consumption. Experiments and simulations also point towards lower power consumption and better thermal properties than Cu dual-damascene schemes. At the same time, the stepwise implementation as outlined above will allow to minimize the risks always associated with the introduction of a new technology.