Dr. Ren Ng, president and CEO of Refocus Imaging, led a demo of his company’s light field cameras, which record the full light field as it enters the camera, ultimately extending the capabilities of conventional digital cameras and “turning camera hardware into software.” Ng explains that by doing this, light field cameras “bring the economics and power of Moore’s Law to the camera system.” (snapshots from their Web site illustrate the demo, which they re-created live, on stage at IDF!).

Also on hand was Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, co-founder and chief scientist at VMware. He shared the stage with Intel Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Enterprise Group, Pat Gelsinger, to demonstrate a flex migration across four generations of hardware as well as the value of the deep collaboration between Intel and VMware.

There was a live demo by Classmate PC, following the news-making announcement of the new, second generation classmate (”featuring a 9-inch LCD screen, 6-cell battery, 512MB memory, a 30GB hard disk drive and a built-in webcam“), the unveiling of Intel’s Tukwila Itanium processor (“Two billion transistors in one processor”), and a mobility-focused Asianux demoonstration of the breadth of Moblin Usage, including a new way to play video from the Web and a new way to order Chinese food.

A Montevina demo was noteworthy after Intel Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Mobility Group, Dadi Perlmutter, revealed that Intel’s next generation mobile platform, Montevina, will provide twice the 3D processing power of any current integrated solution.

Demos showcasing Neusoft driver assistance, Fuwa robot, Adobe Air, Sobey real-time rendering and MID & mobile designs rounded out the event.

Tags: Intel, IDF, Shanghai, mobility, Ren Ng, Refocus Imaging, light field cameras, Mendel Rosenblum, VMware, Pat Gelsinger, flex migration, Classmate PC, Tukwila, Itanium, processor, Moblin, Montevina, Dadi Perlmutter, Fuwa, Adobe Air, Sobey, IDF2008, Silverthorne, Intel Atom, mobile Internet device, Nehalem, Dunnington, Multithreading, virtualization, high performance computing, wireless technology, Centrino, WiMax, 45nm, 32nm

James, who manages the global network of teams that interact with all of the software companies that do business with Intel, spoke about, “Where Innovation Happens: Engaging with Intel Software Communities.”

In this podcast, we hear how the “community” aspect turns out to be key, as the relationships James oversees encompass the entire product lifecycle from early planning all the way through to sales and marketing. James devoted some time during the keynote to a few of those communities, including Moblin.org, a new community site that hosts the Mobile & Internet Linux Project, an “umbrella, open source project” for mobile Internet devices (MID). Another community, www.lesswatts.org, is a developer community for reducing power consumption that’s supported by Oracle (the site explains that, rather than being “about marketing,” it’s about “creating a community around saving power on Linux, bringing developers, users, and sysadmins together to share software, optimizations, and tips and tricks.” There’s also a global developer relations group, in addition to engineering and product teams.

James also pointed to whatif.intel.com, an Intel initiative that encourages communities to weigh in on the software development process, providing resources like, at the moment, an Integrated Debugger for Java/JNI Environments, for example.

In addition to supporting such a diverse array of global communities, James also oversees Intel Solution Services, Intel’s worldwide professional services organization.

At Intel, James was the product and program manager for the first software video codecs (Indeo), and was a member of the team developing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for the unification of Unix on Intel Architecture.

To learn more about the Intel Software Community, click here.

Tags: software keynote, Software and Solutions, Renee James, Fall IDF, software companies, Software Communities, Moblin.org, Mobile & Internet Linux Project, open source, mobile Internet device, MID, Oracle, Linux, developer relations, software development, Integrated Debugger, video codecs, Indeo, Application Programming Interfaces, APIs, Unix