We not too long ago reported that AMD’s upcoming RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs (to not be confused with their older, GCN-based Radeon HD 7000-series GPUs) will help DisplayPort 2.1. That was curious, as a result of on the time of writing, there was no DisplayPort 2.1. Nicely, now there’s, and lo and behold, it is truly not shocking that they help the two.1 revision of the spec, as a result of all 2.0 gadgets additionally help 2.1, apparently.
That bit of data is embedded proper within the first paragraph of VESA’s announcement. The group says that it has been “working intently with member corporations” to guarantee that extant DisplayPort 2.0 merchandise have been ready to fulfill the “newer, extra demanding” 2.1 spec. The assertion is kind of sturdy: VESA says that “all beforehand licensed DisplayPort 2.0 merchandise…have already been licensed” for two.1.
What does that truly imply? Not quite a bit, actually. The place earlier DisplayPort variations made help for Show Stream Compression non-obligatory, gadgets licensed for DisplayPort 2.1 are required to have it. Show Stream Compression is a lossless compression technique developed by VESA that drastically reduces the bandwidth required by high-resolution and high-framerate shows. Nearly all DisplayPort gadgets, even earlier than DP 2.0, already supported this know-how, so it is not an enormous change.
The true change for DisplayPort 2.1 is extra of a behind-the-scenes distinction. The brand new revision of the usual alters signaling and allows DisplayPort tunneling, each of which assist the DP 2 commonplace align extra intently with USB4. This does not actually change a lot for end-users, though gadgets sending DisplayPort information over the identical wire as USB information do not should compromise on video sign high quality anymore. Nonetheless, the revision is extra aimed toward simplifying the design of gadgets with DisplayPort Alternate Mode help, because the adjustments within the 2.1 commonplace imply that DisplayPort 2.1 and USB4 can share a PHY.
Surprisingly—given the relative lack of adjustments—DP 2.1 additionally contains an replace to the cable specification. It is now doable to have 40-Gbps DP40 cables “past two meters” in size, whereas DP80 cables can attain previous one meter. These cables each carry 4 lanes of UHBR video, on the 10-Gbps fee per lane for DP40 and on the 20-Gbps fee for DP80. Whereas these have been technically doable earlier than, you would not get VESA’s certification. That could possibly be the contact of dying for a cable vendor, so it is good to see VESA opening the door to longer cables.
All extant DisplayPort 2.0 gadgets are already succesful of assembly the stringent DP 2.1 commonplace, so when you have a DP 2.0 system, congratulations! It has been magically upgraded to 2.1, identical to that. Hopefully distributors take after Intel’s instance (and never NVIDIA’s) and replace to the most recent commonplace so we will all take pleasure in 8K120 video sooner moderately than later.
