VESA Announces DisplayPort 1.3 Standard, Pushes Bandwidth to 32.4Gbps for 5K Displays

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Bring on the 5K monitors!

Just when we were beginning to get used to the idea of 4K resolution TVs and monitors, Dell went and teased us with a 32-inch 5K panel that it plans on releasing later this year for $2,499.99. With a resolution of 5120x2880, that's 70 percent more pixels than 4K, and to drive that many pixels you'd need to utilize two DisplayPort 1.2 ports. We don't expect 5K to be a mainstream thing anytime soon, but for those who plan on playing with that many pixels, you'll be happy to know that the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) announced the release of the DisplayPort 1.3 standard, which supports 5K monitors.
DisplayPort 1.3 increases the maximum link bandwidth to 32.4Gbps by way of four lanes running at a link rate of 8.1 Gbps each. That's a 50 percent bump from DisplayPort 1.2a, and once you account for transport overhead, DisplayPort's 32.4Gbps combined link rate delivers 25.92Gbps of uncompressed video data, VESA says.
"While becoming a mainstream video standard, DisplayPort continues to be at the cutting edge of A/V transport," said VESA Board of Directors Chair Alan Kobayashi, Fellow & Executive R&D Management for DisplayPort Group at MegaChips Technology America. "These new enhancements to DisplayPort will facilitate both higher resolution displays, as well as easier integration of DisplayPort into multi-protocol data transports, which will satisfy consumer’s desire for simplicity and ease-of-use."
The new standard will allow users to run 5K monitors using a single DisplayPort cable without the use of compression. It will also allow for higher resolutions when running multiple monitors through a single connection using DisplayPort's Multi-Stream feature, such as running a pair of 4K monitors.
DisplayPort also adds support for the 4:2:0 pixel structure, a video format used on consumer digital television interfaces, which enables support for future 8K x 4K displays, VESA says.
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook


More...