DisplayPort 2.0 Implementations Delayed, Will Surface Late 2021

DisplayPort 2.0 was supposed to see its implementation beginning by the end of 2020, but that time has come and gone without a single DisplayPort 2.0-touting product on sight. According to VESA, the rollout has been delayed mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented the standards body to perform its PlugTest events, where engineers and hardware developers convene to discuss, tinker, and decide on the standard’s implementation. VESA held multiple of these events per year, but none in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic; thus, the delay we are now witnessing surged.

VESA plans to have their first 2021 PlugTest event in Spring of this year, however, and aims to see products on the shelves later, and likely not before 2H 2020. The standards body said that there are, indeed, DisplayPort 2.0 monitors currently in-development, but that these too have been affected by the lack of PlugTests. DisplayPort 2.0 is an update to the current 1.4 implementation, and currently, there are no launched products (monitors, graphics cards, etc) that can make use of the new version. The new standard will technically support up to 80 Gbps max, nearly three times the currently available bandwidth in the DisplayPort 1.4 spec. DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0 also brings most of these capabilities to USB Type-C connectors via the USB 4.0 revision.

DisplayPort 2.0 will allow for the following connections (and respective bandwidth consumption):

Single-display resolutions:

• One 16K (15360 x 8460) display @ 60Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• One 10K (10240 x 4320) display @ 60Hz and 24 bpp 4:4:4 (no compression)

Dual-display resolutions:

• Two 8K (7680 x 4320) displays @ 120Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• Two 4K (3840 x 2160) displays @ 144Hz and 24 bpp 4:4:4 (no compression)

Triple-display resolutions:

• Three 10K (10240 x 4320) displays @ 60Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• Three 4K (3840 x 2160) displays @ 90Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (no compression)