In his keynote, Anand Chandrasekher (right), senior VP and general manager of Intel's ultra mobility group, played a video showing the new Moorestown platform, just days old, running in an Intel lab on a validation board.

Moorestown will use 10 times less idle power compared to first-generation MID platforms based on the Intel Atom processor, according to Chandrasekher, although Belli Kuttanna (left), chief CPU architect of Intel's ultra mobility group, a man Chandrasekher referred to as "the father of Atom" said he believed Moorestown could do even better.

ZDNet.com.au attended IDF as a guest of Intel.

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The developer forum was held in Teipei's International Convention Centre.

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Past the glitzy sculpture in the entrance hall, escalators headed up to the auditorium where the keynote would be held.

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Seated, the first question was "why is there a motorbike on stage?" although no answer was immediately forthcoming.

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Navin Shenoy, Intel VP and general manager sales and marketing group (Asia-Pacific) spent some time praising Nehalem (Intel's new chip family), which the company has designed from the ground up, and the first versions of which will be debuting in November.

He showed the crowd a demonstration of Nehalem's performance on a "very, very computationally intensive" animation. Nehalem created the animation faster than Penryn, according to Shenoy, by almost two times.

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Later in the presentation, Asus chairman Jonney Shih came on stage to discuss the Atom in his company's successful Eee range and the next generation platform Moorestown. "We are very excited you know," Shih said of the new platform.

Chandrasekher joked that now he had Asus' netbook in his grasp, Shih wouldn't get it back, adding that he was looking forward to buying more of the devices for his family. "Just get your money ready," Shih quipped back.

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The question of the motorcycle was answered as Chandrasekher began to talk embedded devices. He mounted the bike and explained how such vehicles with their MIDs were used in California by police to receive real time information.
"There's tons of good examples like that," Chandrasekher said.

(Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au)