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