The world's three leading makers of personal computers (PCs), Dell, HP and Lenovo, said on Thursday they would support the DisplayPort standard developed by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). The companies did not say when they plan to ship first PCs featuring the new interface for monitors, but indicated that the interface would make monitors less expensive.
?DisplayPort is an excellent customer solution that can provide advantages over current and other emerging interfaces. DisplayPort can enable more-affordable flat-panel displays, support protected high-definition content, and scale performance to meet the demands of next-generation displays by enabling new features and usages,?said Kevin Kettler, Dell's chief technology officer (CTO).
The DisplayPort is designed to enable a common interface approach across both internal and external display connections. Internal connections include display interfaces within a notebook PC or within an LCD display. External display connections include the interface between a source device such as a desktop PC, set-top box, DVD player or game console, and a display device such as a direct view flat panel or projection display for viewing video and graphics. The DisplayPort standard will also include an optional digital audio capability allowing streaming of high definition digital audio-video content over the interface, and provides performance scalability to enable the next generation of displays featuring higher color depths, refresh rates, and display resolutions.
DisplayPort incorporates a Main Link, a high-bandwidth, low-latency, unidirectional connection supporting isochronous stream transport. One stream video with associated audio is supported in Version.1.0, but DisplayPort is seamlessly extensible, enabling support of multiple video streams. Version 1.0 also includes an Auxiliary Channel to provide consistent-bandwidth, low-latency, bi-directional connectivity with Main Link management, and device control based on VESA's E-DDC, E-EDID, DDC/CI and MCCS standards. The Link configuration enables true ?Plug-and-Play? The Main Link bandwidth enables data transfer at up to 10.8Gb/s using a total of four lanes.
The main backers of DisplayPort are ATI Technologies, Dell, Genesis Microchip, HP, Molex Incorporated, Nvidia, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, and Tyco Electronics. But Nvidia also participates in a special interest group which pushes another display interface standard ?universal display interface.
