The big announcement at CDNLive Israel was during Anirudh's keynote when he announced the second product in the system analysis space, Celsius. This is a thermal solver using both finite element analysis (for the solid parts) and computational fluid dynamics (for airflow etc) to provide full thermal analysis that works tightly with Cadence's other products to provide a full thermal-electrical analysis. I wrote a post about this that day, Celsius: Thermal and Electrical Analysis Together at Last, that went live just around the time Anirudh took the stage (the press release actually went out the day before). We had a demo of Celsius in the exhibit area.

I was also in the exhibit area, as I have been at most CDNLive events this year, signing people up for Sunday Brunch in return for a free copy of A Year of Breakfasts 2018. Unfortunately, the books I had shipped from San Jose a couple of months ago got stuck in customs, without anyone realizing. They cleared sometime during the day...but when they got to the hotel, the hotel refused them since they don't accept shipments like that for security reasons. Eventually, on of the managers of the Intercontinental, where the event is held, hand-carried a box to us. Books are heavy, and each box weighs about 50 pounds, so this was going beyond the call of duty. I managed to give away a couple of dozen copies, but I'd missed the most productive times, breakfast and lunch. The shipment of books for CDNLive China got stuck temporarily in customs too. I don't know what it is about books that makes customs so interested in them, compared to all sorts of stuff (like the demo Palladium system) that seems to move around without any problem. Apparently, in Israel, they needed to look at a copy to see who wrote it.

Talking of the Intercontinental Hotel, when I've stayed there before I've had a room that basically looked out at the hotel next door, with a glimpse of the Mediterranean in the gap. This time my room faced the other way and I think this has to be the most beautiful view I can remember having out of any hotel room.

Israel Fact of the Day

Here's my Israel fact of the day that I only discovered on this trip. You presumably know that the Dead Sea is the lowest point in the world, at 1388 feet (423 meters) below sea-level. By comparison, the lowest point in the US is Badwater in Death Valley at 279 feet below sea level. It is called "dead" because the salinity is so high that fish (and anything else beyond some micro-organisms) cannot live there. There is no outflow, since water doesn't flow uphill and it is already at the lowest point, so over the millennia, any salts and minerals that find their way there, stay there. Well, lots find their way out in cosmetics since the salts are (by reputation anyway) good for the skin. If you go there, you can actually find huge chunks of the minerals just lying around the shore and around smaller pools like in the photo.

The main source of water for the Dead Sea is the Jordan River, which flows from the Sea of Galilee. Despite the "sea" in its name, this is actually an inland freshwater lake, also known as Lake Tiberias. And here is the fact of the day: the Sea of Galilee is 686 feet below sea level. So the entire Jordan river is lower than the lowest point in the US. Actually, the Jordan River has an upper part which starts in the Golan Heights. But it drops very steeply at first, so almost the entire river is below sea level, and all of the part that flows through the Jordan Valley. I suppose I should describe this as the Israel/Jordan fact of the day, since that part of the river is actually the border between the two countries, so is partially in each (assuming the border runs down the middle of the river).

Palestine Fact of the Day

I made my first trip to Palestine (to Bethlehem and Jericho) on this trip. But the fact of the day is about microelectronics. Many famous-name semiconductor companies are doing some development in Palestine, mostly in Ramallah. Anywhere there are good engineers, semiconductor (technology, in general, really) will find a way to employ them.

For many reasons, these engineering groups are structured as subcontractors, rather than true subsidiaries. Cadence has two groups of subcontractors there. I was asked if I could go there next time I'm in Israel and present my EDA101 high-level overview. I was also asked to deliver to our Israel-based engineering teams. Apparently, most of our engineers are very technical about narrow technical specialties and so they have all been required to watch replays of the EDA101 presentation I did in San Jose, but it would be better still to do it in person.

Well, there are plenty of copies of my book available to them all in the meantime. Did I mention my books got stuck in customs?

CDNLive

I have a challenge at CDNLive Israel since most, but not all, presentations are in Hebrew. I look at the names of the presenters, and if they seem Israeli, I assume they will present in Hebrew. Sometimes I get caught out, and someone with an Italian name presents in Hebrew anyway. Sometimes I go to presentations even though I know they will be in Hebrew. Since all the slides are in English, as long as I already know roughly what is being talked about, I get enough additional color to write about it. I will cover a couple of the presentations that I attended in future posts.

Apart from Anirudh Devgan's keynote with the Celsius announcement, there were three other keynotes:

• Shlomit Weiss, SVP silicon engineering at Mellanox on Dataversity.
• Anat Shakked, the CEO of Nexite on Digitalizing Physical Apparel. Her startup creates little battery-less chips that can be added to clothing during manufacture and then used to trace through the supply chain, to improve the retail experience, and then, if you don't disable the chip, can monitor things like when they need washing.
• Dov Moran, Managing Partner at Grove Ventures on Deep Tech—Made in Israel. As he put it: "I’m not going to talk about Grove ventures, but instead what makes an early-stage VC a great one". Actually, it was more about what it takes to be a great startup founder, or what a VC looks for anyway. A mixture of intelligence, flexibility, stoicism, and experience.

I will cover the highlights of these presentations in future posts.

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