https://www.techpowerup.com/299946/vesa-releases-displayport-2-1-specification
 
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) announced today that it has released DisplayPort 2.1, the latest version of the DisplayPort specification, which is backward compatible with and supersedes the previous version of DisplayPort (DisplayPort 2.0). VESA has been working closely with member companies to ensure that products supporting DisplayPort 2.0 would actually meet the newer, more demanding DisplayPort 2.1 spec. Due to this effort, all previously certified DisplayPort 2.0 products including UHBR (Ultra-high Bit Rate) capable products - whether GPUs, docking station chips, monitor scalar chips, PHY repeater chips such as re-timers, or DP40/DP80 cables (including both passive and active, and using full-size DisplayPort, Mini DisplayPort or USB Type-C connectors) - have already been certified to the stricter DisplayPort 2.1 spec.

Achieving a robust, end-to-end user visual experience remains the utmost priority for VESA's DisplayPort specification, whether across a native DisplayPort cable, via DisplayPort Alt Mode (DisplayPort over the USB Type-C connector), or tunneled through the USB4 link. As such, DisplayPort 2.1 has tightened its alignment with the USB Type-C specification as well as the USB4 PHY specification to facilitate a common PHY servicing both DisplayPort and USB4. In addition, DisplayPort 2.1 has added a new DisplayPort bandwidth management feature to enable DisplayPort tunneling to coexist with other I/O data traffic more efficiently over the USB4 link. This increased efficiency is on top of mandated support for VESA's visually lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC) codec and VESA's Panel Replay capability. DSC bitstream support can reduce DisplayPort transport bandwidth in excess of 67 percent without visual artifacts, while VESA's Panel Replay capability can reduce DisplayPort tunneling packet transport bandwidth in excess of 99 percent when Panel Replay operation is taking place.
 
"Achieving greater alignment between DisplayPort and USB on a common PHY has been a particularly important effort within VESA given the significant overlap in use case models between the DisplayPort and USB4 ecosystems," stated Alan Kobayashi, VESA Board Chair and VESA DisplayPort Task Group Chair. "DisplayPort 2.1 brings DisplayPort into convergence with USB4 PHY specifications to ensure the highest video performance across a broad range of consumer products. Display transport through DisplayPort, with its higher bit rates and proven visual quality of DSC compression even for HDR content, offers ample bandwidth for the needs of virtually every practical application. Features such as driving multiple displays over a single cable, or enabling multiple functions on a single port like video, power and data transfer, no longer require any compromise in video format choice. The advanced capabilities of the DisplayPort video interface are enabled by the invaluable contributions by our more than 300 member companies from across the electronics ecosystem."

DisplayPort 2.1 has also updated the DisplayPort cable specification to provide greater robustness and enhancements to full-size and Mini DisplayPort cable configurations that enable improved connectivity and longer cable lengths (beyond two meters for DP40 cables and beyond one meter for DP80 cables) without diminishing UHBR performance. VESA certified DP40 cables support up to the UHBR10 link rate (10 Gbps), with four lanes, providing a maximum throughput of 40 Gbps, while VESA certified DP80 cables support up to the UHBR20 link rate (20 Gbps), with four lanes, providing a maximum throughput of 80 Gbps.

"For all of our standards including DisplayPort, VESA has invested significant resources in testing and auditing procedures, including interoperability testing of products incorporating VESA specifications. This is to ensure that products that are introduced to market that claim support of VESA's standards meet the high-quality benchmarks that we have established," stated James Choate, compliance program manager for VESA. "VESA continues to investigate and develop new procedures to improve our auditing process in order to ensure robust implementation of quality products supporting DisplayPort and other VESA specs in the market. Thanks to the contributions by test equipment vendors, VESA has a solid test infrastructure in place to support wider testing and deployment of DisplayPort 2.1 certified devices in the marketplace."
 
I hope future video cards take advantage of this. 
 

the_Scarlet_one
It is annoying the NVidia didn’t use DisplayPort 2.0 on the 40 series. It does not make sense for them to still be on 1.4a at this point when they are attempting to push every other boundary, but they leave 1.4a in place.

Rumor has it that AMD's next gen GPU will have DP 2.0 or DP 2.1

Intels GPU… their very first try at making a discrete GPU, and their most basic discrete GOU the a310, has DisplayPort 2.0… and it can also support 4 displays simultaneously. Yet NVidia maxes out at 3 displays on DP1.4a lol.

DP2.1 specs look very nice as well. It’s always great to see progress finally happening.

Brad_Hawthorne

the_Scarlet_one
It is annoying the NVidia didn’t use DisplayPort 2.0 on the 40 series. It does not make sense for them to still be on 1.4a at this point when they are attempting to push every other boundary, but they leave 1.4a in place.

VESA has always given AMD a head start on DP. They were the ones to push it into the mainstream. Remember how long it originally took to get a DP in an Nvidia card after AMD launched it with 6 port DP cards right from the start? Then again Nvidia has never been a team player with third party specs. Prime example is FreeSync vs G-Sync and how long it took for Nvidia to also adopt FreeSync only after Nvidia renamed it to a variant of G-Sync as though their marketing was rewriting history.

Nvidia has never had a good history with implementing new stuff correctly not to mention trying to make things proprietary. I remember when they saw Physx and decided to buy them out and use them as a way to leverage people to Nvidia's video cards. Only problem was it required a extra gpu which not many people readily had on hand and proper video game support.