VESA Highlights Growing Adoption of DisplayPort over USB-C, New Codec for Handheld Device-Specific Display Interface Compression at Mobile World Congress

Emerging display standards developments supporting AR/VR, automotive and other applications also to be highlighted at Mobile World Congress

SAN JOSE, Calif. – February 13, 2018 – The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA^®) today announced that the growing trend of viewing higher-resolution digital content over mobile devices is fueling the adoption of DisplayPort™ and other VESA standards in the consumer electronics space. DisplayPort Alt Mode, which enables simultaneous video, power and data delivery to be carried over the USB Type-C connector (USB-C), has helped accelerate the growth of DisplayPort beyond PCs into mobile applications. In addition, VESA is leveraging its expertise in video transport compression to develop a new display interface compression standard specifically designed for the handheld display market, called VESA Display Codec for Mobile (VDC-M). VESA will highlight these and other video standards developments at Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, Spain, later this month.

New Video Compression Developments

Since its introduction four years ago, VESA’s Display Stream Compression (DSC) standard has achieved widespread success in enabling video transport compression. Adopted across the major display interface standards—including DisplayPort, HDMI® and MIPI®—DSC enables visually lossless compression for ultra-high-definition (UHD) display applications, while also facilitating High Dynamic Range (HDR) and 8K video across DisplayPort and USB-C. Working closely with the MIPI Alliance, VESA is now developing its new VDC-M compression standard, which is specifically geared toward embedded handheld display applications within a smartphone. VDC-M provides a higher level of compression at the same visually lossless quality level as DSC, with a trade-off of higher circuit complexity. VESA plans to finalize and publish the VDC-M specification during Q2 2018.

“MIPI Alliance and VESA have maintained a longstanding liaison,” said Joel Huloux, chairman of MIPI Alliance. “Incorporating VESA’s VDC-M into MIPI DSI display interfaces offers decreased bandwidth, power savings and a reduced chip footprint, all key considerations in today’s mobile designs. Further, visually lossless compression is a top priority, and VDC-M maintains the same quality level as DSC, with the advantage of increased compression levels.”

USB Type-C Accelerating DisplayPort Adoption

DisplayPort Alt Mode, which enables the highest display performance available, combined with USB-C’s high-speed data transfer and power delivery functions, has helped expand the reach of DisplayPort into mobile phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and upcoming S9, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets, gaming devices like the Nintendo Switch, and other mobile devices. Incorporation of DisplayPort Alt Mode into chipsets such as Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 835 and 845, Samsung’s Exynos and HiSilicon’s Kirin 970 systems-on-chip (SoCs) has also helped fuel broader market penetration of DisplayPort.

According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, the number of shipped handsets, PCs and tablets incorporating native DisplayPort or DisplayPort Alt Mode will increase from nearly 215 million units in 2017 to more than 345 million units in 2018 (a year-on-year growth of 61 percent).

DisplayPort Enabling AR/VR Applications

With AR/VR driving demand for higher levels of bandwidth for video transport, VESA is strongly committed to supporting this emerging technology. Last year, it formed a Special Interest Group (SIG) focused on AR/VR that has since become a full-fledged task group. DisplayPort 1.4 with HBR3 provides the high bandwidth (8.1 Gigabits per second per lane) needed to support lower latency, higher refresh rates and higher resolution. DisplayPort over USB-C is the best way to obtain the high resolution, HDR color, device power, and USB data that next-generation AR/VR headsets require.

As announced last month, VESA is already working on the next-generation DisplayPort standard to increase data rates by two-fold and beyond to enable future performance requirements of traditional displays, such as beyond-8K resolutions, as well as to enhance the user experience with AR/VR displays, including 4K-and-beyond VR resolution. VESA plans to publish this update within the next 18 months.

Increasing Focus on Automotive Display Ecosystem

Automotive is another fast-growing space for high-resolution video displays and content. Both DisplayPort and Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) are already gaining attention in the automotive industry. Many popular SoCs today support the output of DisplayPort and eDP, and eDP is the main input interface on display panels used in notebook PCs today, supporting up to 4K resolution with a low wire count. VESA has just formed a SIG for automotive display connectivity to discuss display interface requirements and the potential for new standards specifically addressing automotive display applications. The first meeting will be held on Thursday, February 22 and is open to both VESA members and non-members. For more information on the VESA Automotive Display SIG, please visit www.vesa.org.

“Throughout its nearly 30-year history, VESA has been a leader in developing video standards that cross the ecosystem,” stated Bill Lempesis, executive director at VESA. “Continued growth of mobile markets and applications is changing the electronics industry landscape. Improvements in video transport, along with displays, GPUs and connectivity such as the migration to 5G, are needed to improve the mobile display experience. VESA is committed to enabling the same degree of ubiquitous connectivity and video quality for mobile products as it has for stationary displays.”

VESA will showcase a range of demos at Mobile World Congress that highlight the versatility of capabilities its standards enable:

• Display Stream Compression in 4K – The latest version of DSC (v1.2), developed by VESA with one of the objectives being to enable a consumer 8K display segment, will be demonstrated in 4K with compressed vs. uncompressed video side-by-side to showcase the visually lossless performance of this standard.
• DisplayHDR – VESA will showcase the new ProArt PA27AC display from ASUS, which meets VESA’s new DisplayHDR 400 standard for HDR laptop and desk monitor displays.
• 8K Resolution – VESA will demonstrate the ability of DisplayPort to drive an 8K display using an HP Envy x360 laptop connected to a Dell UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K 60Hz monitor (UP3218K), which offers 33.2 million pixels at 7680×4320 resolution.
• DisplayPort over USB-C – VESA will showcase an array of the latest commercially available mobile phones, laptops and tablets utilizing USB-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode.
• AR/VR – VESA will demonstrate DAQRI Smart Glasses™ utilizing DisplayPort over USB-C. DAQRI Smart Glasses relay environmentally-based data directly into the user’s field of vision in real-time, allowing a previously unseen view into a landscape of game-changing information and intelligence.

Media interested in learning more about VESA and its family of standards are invited to visit the association at Mobile World Congress in Hall 2 Stand 2A24MR on February 26-March 1, or at ShowStoppers @ MWC 2018 at the Universitat de Barcelona on February 25.

About VESA

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) is an international, non-profit standards association representing a global network of more than 260 hardware, software, computer, display and component manufacturers committed to developing and promoting the electronics industry. For nearly 30 years, VESA has created and supported simple, universal and cross-product solutions for today’s video and electronics industry. The association’s standards include DisplayPort™, the industry replacement for DVI, LVDS and VGA. DisplayPort utilizes a state-of-the-art digital protocol and provides an expandable foundation to enable astonishing digital display experiences. For more information on VESA, please visit http://www.vesa.org/.