VESA has announced a revision of the DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity standard. Version 2.1a now supports 2-meter passive cables, up from 1 meter before.

DisplayPort 2.1, formerly known as DisplayPort 2.0, was announced way back in mid-2019 where it promised up to 80Gbps bandwidth to enable beyond-8K and much higher refresh rates.

Unfortunately, things have progressed very slow since the original announcement, leading many to believe that DisplayPort 2.1 is not as robust as first thought.


DisplayPort 2.1a revision
At CES 2024, a new revision in the form of DisplayPort 2.1a was announced with support for longer cables, reinforcing the idea of technical challenges.

- "VESA today announced that it has published the latest update to DisplayPort, version 2.1a. This update replaces the VESA certified DP40 ultra-high-bit-rate (UHBR) cable specification with a new VESA certified DP54 UHBR cable spec to enable up to four-lane UHBR13.5 link rate support (a maximum throughput of 54 Gbps) over a two-meter passive cable. As a result, the DisplayPort 2.1a update effectively doubles the passive cable length for UHBR13.5 GPU-to-display connections—which previously could only be supported through a DP80 UHBR cable," announced VESA.

Perhaps this revision can help boost the adoption of DisplayPort 2.1 in the monitor and graphic card markets, where HDMI 2.1 in the meantime has become a popular alternative for high-resolution and high-frame rate connection.

- "With the latest update to DisplayPort, the UHBR13.5 cable spec is now purpose built to provide both UHBR10 and UHBR13.5 monitors and graphics cards with a longer passive cable. Consumers are no longer limited to connecting UHBR13.5 sink and source devices with a one-meter DP80 cable, which provides more bandwidth support than what their hardware needs and, in some cases, might be too short for their set-up, for example with ultra-wide curved displays," said James Choate, compliance program manager for VESA.

For more reading on what is holding back DisplayPort 2.1 adoption, FlatpanelsHD can recommend TFTCentral's article on the subject here.