VESA this week launched model 2.1 of the DisplayPort specification. The replace brings a number of vital modifications regarding effectivity, however as you’ll learn, VESA strove to maintain issues clean for each implementers and shoppers.
DisplayPort 2.1 is extra than simply backward suitable with DisplayPort 2.0. As a result of efforts of VESA and its companions, “all beforehand licensed DisplayPort 2.0 merchandise… have already been licensed to the stricter DisplayPort 2.1 spec.” So sure, any GPU, Docking Station, monitor, cable (or something) licensed for DisplayPort 2.0 will fall beneath the stricter newer v2.1 specification.
VESA says one of the vital issues it has tried to attain with this replace is to supply a strong expertise. This philosophy applies to customers connecting peripherals through a local DisplayPort cable, through DisplayPort Alt Mode (DisplayPort over the USB Sort-C connector), or tunneling by means of the USB4 hyperlink. Whichever answer you would possibly use, the alignment of the spec and PHY (bodily layer) has been tightened for dependability.
So, if all this stuff stay the identical, and DisplayPort 2.0 and a couple of.1 are interchangeable, you could be questioning what is the level of the brand new specification. Maybe an important introduction is the brand new DisplayPort bandwidth administration function “to allow DisplayPort tunneling to coexist with different I/O knowledge visitors extra effectively over the USB4 hyperlink.” In keeping with the VESA press launch, this effectivity comes on high of recent mandated help for VESA’s visually lossless Show Stream Compression (DSC) codec and VESA’s Panel Replay functionality. VESA’s DSC implementation will cut back bandwidth utilization by as a lot as 67% with out visible artifacts. Furthermore, the brand new Panel Replay functionality can cut back tunneling packet transport bandwidth by over 99% in sure conditions.
VESA Board Chair and VESA DisplayPort Job Group Chair Alan Kobayashi boldly claimed that the upper bitrates supported by DisplayPort 2.1 “presents ample bandwidth for the wants of just about each sensible utility.”
The announcement additionally revealed that cable specs had been up to date. With DisplayPort 2.1, VESA goals to permit for improved capabilities and longer cable lengths, generally extending over two meters. “VESA licensed DP40 cables help as much as the UHBR10 hyperlink charge (10 Gbps), with 4 lanes, offering a most throughput of 40 Gbps,” VESA explains. “VESA licensed DP80 cables help as much as the UHBR20 hyperlink charge (20 Gbps), with 4 lanes, offering a most throughput of 80 Gbps.”
Apparently, ex-HardOCP Editor-in-Chief Kyle Bennett tweeted final week that a number of sources had indicated to him that AMD Radeon Navi 31 GPUs would provide help for the DisplayPort 2.1 specification. This summer season, there have been rumors of RDNA 3 supporting DisplayPort 2.0 and UHBR20. Intel Arc LE mannequin GPUs additionally help DisplayPort 2.0. Contemplating what VESA has stated, each the AMD and Intel GPUs will help DisplayPort 2.1. Placing these into aggressive perspective, the lately launched Nvidia Ada Lovelace flagship, the GeForce RTX 4090, helps DisplayPort 1.4.
