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DisplayPort 1.3 Adds 5k(!) Support

DisplayPort v1.3 has just been released by the Video Electronic Standards Association (VESA), supporting up to 32.4Gbps.

The speed of v1.3 (each of the four lanes runs at 8.1Gbps) represents a 50% increase from v1.2a. Allowing for transport overhead, the combined link rate delivers 25.9Gbps of uncompressed video data. VESA says that this is enough to support the ‘5k’ (5120 x 2880) monitors recently seen at IFA, without the use of compression. 4:2:0 chroma subsampling is also supported, which will enable DisplayPort to be used in future 8k displays, says VESA.

Higher resolutions can be achieved on multiple monitors, using DisplayPort’s Multi-Stream feature. For example, it will be possible to drive two UltraHD displays using VESA Coordinated Video Timing. Support has also been added for HDCP 2.2 and HDMI 2.0 with CEC.

DisplayPort’s value for multi-signal interfaces has been enhanced with v1.3. The higher link rate enables a single UltraHD monitor (at 60Hz and 24-bit colour) to be supported over two lanes; the other two lanes can be used to increase capacity for alternate data types, such as USB 3.0.

Display Daily Comments

HDMI Licensing is probably very uncomfortable with this news! The association had nothing new to show at IFA and admitted that manufacturers are only interested in the 4k/60 aspect of the HDMI 2.0 standard (which doesn’t support 4:4:4 subsampling). (TA)