Display Port 1.3, USB Type-C, and 5k Displays

Over the past few weeks were the been a number of new announcements that will impact displays and display technology going forward. First was that Dell's preview of a 5k monitor with 5120x2880 resolution. This is a "retina-ing" (Apple's term for doubling vertical and horizontal pixels) of a 2560x1440 monitor. The 27" display is a beast with 14.75M pixels, and 218ppi. This compares to 8.3M pixels and 157ppi on a 28" 4k UHD.

Obviously this panel isn't for gaming - no current GPU could push it effectively, and there are no appreciable gains over 4k UHD. This panel is geared towards professionals who who work with fine details (CAD/CAM/CNC) or large media files (a 4k UHD video editing rig). This particular panel is tiling (think 2x1 Eyefinity or Surround) with 2x DP 1.2 cables. But the future questions remain - "What would we ever use to push 21.2Gbit of data?" The answer came ten days later with the announcement of DisplayPort 1.3.

The new DP 1.3 standard would provide plenty of bandwidth for the 5k displays and dual 4k displays over a single cable. It also allows for additional data types over the cable, such as SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0), HDCP 2.2 and HDMI 2.0. These last two specs will make DP 1.3 more appealing to television users. And, a week after that, USB Type-C was announced with support for DisplayPort Alternate Mode. This will allow 4k UHD display signals to be pushed over USB 3 Type-C connectors.

Source Links:
Dell 5k Preview - AnandTech
DisplayPort 1.3 - 9to5Mac
USB 3.0 Type C - AnandTech