Nice. Hopefully a free standard and USB (like you said) will help adoption. I would love to be able to have any kind of docking port on my next laptop.
The only thing that is lacking from DockPort vs. Thunderbolt would be the potential for housing a GPU inside of a monitor. Considering that no Thunderbolt display contains its own GPU, this isn't much of a loss.
Everything else like Gigabit Ethernet can be tunneled through USB 3.0 at bit higher overhead than PCI-e. Overall this is an acceptable trade off.
The one oddity is that DockPort isn't using standard DisplayPort cables. Is the connector standard DisplayPort/mini-DP?
The connector is Mini-DP. However the cabling apparently required changes. In AMD's Lightning Bolt proposal two pins required changes. But we also don't know if Lightning cables can be as long as DP 1.2 cables.
DockPort uses the CONFIG1 and CONFIG2 lines of the DisplayPort link for USB 2.0 and muxes the SuperSpeed USB signal with DisplayPort lanes 2 and 3. This means you can have USB 2.0 and a full 4-lane DP 1.2 main link with HBR2 and MST, or USB 3.0 and a 2-lane main link that offers the same effective bandwidth as DP 1.1a. Compared to any of the 4-channel Thunderbolt controllers, it's not even in the same ballpark. DockPort will be competing directly with DisplayLink, and I'm not even sure how well it will fare in that battle since it requires OEMs to include additional silicon in the host system.
Also, I believe all DockPort cables are required to be tethered to the display or dock device. They will use a standard MiniDP style connector, but won't be sold separately.
Its been a while, but I was talking to some of the people that were working on it at AFDS 2012 (for which I can thank anandtech for the free admission :) ), and they said that it should be able to provide about 65W of power, but that wasn't a final spec.
All in all, I do like the standard. It seems to be cheaper than thunderbolt and does power as well, which is nice for those of us that hate cable clutter.
I know this is random but does anybody know of there was ever any implementation of this? Any device port that used it? Or Cable certified to be AMD/VESA Dockport compliant?
So now we have three different standards (DisplayPort, DockPort, Thunderbolt) with three different cables that all use the same MiniDP connector/port? Good grief.
Where would Firewire (400, 800) be with Dockport? With thunderbolt, I can hook up my firewire based audio interface to it through a converter-cable. Am I correct that Dockport wouldn't allow hooking up of firewire devices? The picture you put in this article of the back of an apple thunderbolt display shows the firewire connection. the image, together with your subscript suggests it could maybe allow for firewire devices... I could be wrong. But, could you please clarify the position of firewire with this Dockport adventure?
I didn't explicate my main point: If this Dockport protocol doesn't allow for Firewire devices to connect, clearly for many audio/video (semi)professionals Thunderbolt will be the obvious choice.
Unless there is a firewire to USB chip out there, then no it will not allow you to do that. However, I wouldn't be surprised if there is such a chip out there.
This is really not targeted at that market anyways. It is more targeted to just general users.
There isn't a firewire-usb converter chip or whatever. This lack of FireWire support by this Dockport protocol should be pointed out I'd say. For me,.. This protocol adds nothibg to the table over thunderbolt.
I'm currently typing this on my 14" laptop connected to 2 external monitors a USB hub, power, and the headphone jack. While this computer needs more than the previously rumored 65W to power it (discreet graphics), I would very much welcome a cheap standard to get USB, Displayport, and power out of my mobile device. In the next few years I can see most people using a 7-10" tablet as their primary computing device so being able to dock that to a monitor (even two as displayport can be daisy chained) that includes Ethernet, USB, audio, and power would be amazing.
This is exactly the standard needed to enable where I see mobile devices moving towards.
I was thinking it sounded like a modernized version of VESA's previous Plug and Display standard. DisplayPort and USB3 instead of proto-DVI and USB2.
And no one used P&D... as-is. Apple hacked it into something proprietary first(change the shell, rearrange some pins, and reverse the power feed so instead of the monitor powering the computer, the computer powered the monitor. INNOVATION!). For a while, the Apple Display Connector was the only way to hook a monitor to a Mac(without an adapter). The Digital Display Working Group took P&D and stripped everything but the video signals out and released it as DVI(INNOVATION!). As you doubtless know, EVERYONE used DVI.
That said, I would LOVE to see DockPort take off. There's really not a compelling reason to NOT run USB over the video cable. It's a cheap standard, makes monitors with USB hubs VERY easy, and provides a convenient interface for system-side control of the display. But history makes me doubt it will.
DockPort is a crap way to combine USB 3.0 and DisplayPort on the same cable though. If they left the DP 1.2 signaling pairs alone and upgraded the AUX channel to support USB 3.0 with USB Power Delivery it would be another matter entirely. Trying to use the stock mini-DP connector was a mistake. With micro-DP and DP 1.3 looming, they have the opportunity to do it properly and not require tethered cables and host-side hardware to mux the signals.
I guess we might as well use the bandwidth DP 1.2 provides for something while we're waiting for the 4K and MST revolution to finally happen? DockPort just seems like a step in the wrong direction though.
Great, I'm glad were still able to avoid the trap of proprietary licensing. It's an industry killer, which makes me upset Intel, like the old Dell, keeps trying to do it.
***Someone PLEASE answer this for me!
WHY does display port even exist? The last time I looked at the HDMI spec it supported bandwidth FAR beyond what even 4K and 7.1 surround sound could saturate. Furthermore taking the display out of this new DockPort standard would increase transfer speeds, which I'm far more interested in than consolidating 2 cables into 1.
My preferred solution would be HDMI for audio/video and DockPort for accessories, like hard drives and mice and things. But I guess that depends on the answer I receive about HDMI and DP.
Does HDMI have licensing fees for vendor's to use it?
HDMI was created for the consumer electronics industry to to carry the then common DVI TMDS signal along with multichannel audio and a healthy amount of DRM over a single cable with compact, consumer friendly, friction-fit connectors, and yes, it does indeed require licensing. The original target was 1080p60 HDTV and easy adaptability, so the early versions of HDMI used the exact same video signal as single-link DVI, and thus had the same bandwidth limitations (1920x1200, 24 bpp, 60 Hz max). Later versions increased the maximum clock rate enabling support for higher resolutions, higher color depths and 3D formats, added Ethernet and audio return channels, etc. However, even HDMI 1.4b (the most recent version to actually be found in shipping devices at this point) only supports resolutions up to 3840x2160p30 at 24 bpp. The recently released HDMI 2.0 spec bumps the maximum clock rate up once again to support up to 18 Gbit/s of bandwidth, which is on par with the 17.28 Gbit/s of DisplayPort 1.2, and is enough to handle 4K UHD resolutions at 60 Hz.
DisplayPort was created to replace DVI and VGA in the PC space, was designed around a packet based protocol, and is royalty free. Even the original version offered 8.64 Gbit/s of bandwidth, or slightly more than the 8.16 Gbit/s of HDMI 1.3/1.4. DP 1.2 doubled that to 17.28 Gbit/s and (thanks to AMD) has been shipping for 3 years now. DisplayPort has always been more focused on PC display features, such as supporting higher resolutions and multiple display streams over a single port / cable, and has been slower to adopt more consumer (read television) oriented features. By using a packet based protocol, DisplayPort frees itself from requiring a separate TMDS timing source for each display output. This is why AMD GPUs can only drive 2 displays using HDMI / DVI, but can manage 6 via DisplayPort. For many years now, all Intel and AMD GPUs have featured flexible digital display output ports that can support either DisplayPort or TMDS signaling. NVIDIA has been a little slow to join the DP bandwagon for some reason, but I believe Kepler supports DP 1.2 across the board.
Taking the display out of DockPort would leave nothing but USB.
DisplayPort exists because DVI/HDMI is a crap standard. It was never really designed to drive LCD monitors, and has a lot of CRT-specific legacy CRAP embedded in the signal that any monitor being driven by DVI or HDMI has to scrape away before it can reconstruct the frame. There are apparently also issues with the actual transmission spec that make it(in either form) ill-suited for long runs and require a solid chunk of logic in the display to reconstruct a horribly malformed signal. Higher resolutions and color depths are making this a bigger problem every day, and it's my understanding that a lot of people are surprised they managed to get UHD working on the existing HDMI cable in the first place.
I agree with the replies about being a dumb way to go about it.
With Displayport 1.3 they should have just changed connectors to support at least 1 full USB3 channel, or better yes, 1 full USB3.1 channel, since that is neigh, plus full display port 1.3.
I am much less familar with HDMI, but what hurdles would there be to implementing it through that? It seems like the connectors have a lot more signaling wires (I could obviously be mistaken). What about simply muxing or carrying USB3 over HDMI?
HDMI is significantly more common than display port on both displays, TVs and on laptops/video cards. I know HDMI can already carry ethernet (I assume it is 100Mbps, not 1Gbps though).
I guess due to commonality, I would be much more interested if it was HDMI, with Gigabit ethernet PLUS USB3.0 carried over the same wire, through the same port. Then you have options for full size, mini and micro connectors to suit your needs.
It's a little trickier to do it with HDMI, but MHL essentially manages to do it the other way around (muxing HDMI over a USB port).
DisplayPort is the far more capable spec, and is actually ubiquitous in the PC space, although sadly OEMs seem to enjoy hiding it from end users whenever possible.
The problem with combining HDMI, GbE, USB 3.0 and power delivery all on the same cable becomes evident when you add up the number of signaling pairs you'd need to to carry all those protocols at the same time. (4 for the TMDS data and clock for HDMI, 4 for 1000BASE-T style Ethernet, 1 for USB 2.0, 2 for SuperSpeed USB...) We're at 22 conductors before we even get to power, ground and shielding. That's going to be one stout cable, and the connectors will hardly be "micro", not to mention that the interference potential of having that many signals running at totally different frequencies in the same cable is huge. Muxing the signals might reduce pin / conductor count, but also gets messy real quick.
This is exactly why Thunderbolt was born. DisplayPort, Ethernet, PCIe: they're all just packets. Just create one high-speed dual carriageway, dump them all on there and send them on their way. Muxing at the packet level is the way to go. Unfortunately, with Thunderbolt, it's also the expensive, proprietary, Intel only way to go.
I don't understand why they didn't redesign the connector to be a superset of the current standard miniDP connector. The cable had to be redesigned so they might as well have redone the connector then they would have been able to add a couple extra datalines for the USB to reduce the need for multiplexing (and also possibly more power lines for increased amperage to power and charge the connected device)
Also as a superset it would be similar to how USB 3.0 got a redesigned connector, more connections allows more throughput but by containing the old connector everything is backwards compatible still. === Still display+usb+power in one cable is something I have wanted as a standard for a long time now.
I would like to say thanks to them and could we get a firewrie adapter out of this good new's we hope; this is and would be greatly need by so many. ;popajoe thanks you so much's :
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Drumsticks - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Nice. Hopefully a free standard and USB (like you said) will help adoption. I would love to be able to have any kind of docking port on my next laptop.Kevin G - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
The only thing that is lacking from DockPort vs. Thunderbolt would be the potential for housing a GPU inside of a monitor. Considering that no Thunderbolt display contains its own GPU, this isn't much of a loss.Everything else like Gigabit Ethernet can be tunneled through USB 3.0 at bit higher overhead than PCI-e. Overall this is an acceptable trade off.
The one oddity is that DockPort isn't using standard DisplayPort cables. Is the connector standard DisplayPort/mini-DP?
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
The connector is Mini-DP. However the cabling apparently required changes. In AMD's Lightning Bolt proposal two pins required changes. But we also don't know if Lightning cables can be as long as DP 1.2 cables.repoman27 - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
DockPort uses the CONFIG1 and CONFIG2 lines of the DisplayPort link for USB 2.0 and muxes the SuperSpeed USB signal with DisplayPort lanes 2 and 3. This means you can have USB 2.0 and a full 4-lane DP 1.2 main link with HBR2 and MST, or USB 3.0 and a 2-lane main link that offers the same effective bandwidth as DP 1.1a. Compared to any of the 4-channel Thunderbolt controllers, it's not even in the same ballpark. DockPort will be competing directly with DisplayLink, and I'm not even sure how well it will fare in that battle since it requires OEMs to include additional silicon in the host system.Also, I believe all DockPort cables are required to be tethered to the display or dock device. They will use a standard MiniDP style connector, but won't be sold separately.
SodaAnt - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Its been a while, but I was talking to some of the people that were working on it at AFDS 2012 (for which I can thank anandtech for the free admission :) ), and they said that it should be able to provide about 65W of power, but that wasn't a final spec.All in all, I do like the standard. It seems to be cheaper than thunderbolt and does power as well, which is nice for those of us that hate cable clutter.
Daasin - Saturday, March 19, 2022 - link
I know this is random but does anybody know of there was ever any implementation of this? Any device port that used it? Or Cable certified to be AMD/VESA Dockport compliant?Guspaz - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
So now we have three different standards (DisplayPort, DockPort, Thunderbolt) with three different cables that all use the same MiniDP connector/port? Good grief.En1gma - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
on PCIe-based TB there is a possibility to use an external video cardon USB-based DockPort there isn't
rviswas11 - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
see that would interest me but there have been no devices other than apple products with thunderbolt and no egpus released yetJohnHardkiss - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Where would Firewire (400, 800) be with Dockport? With thunderbolt, I can hook up my firewire based audio interface to it through a converter-cable. Am I correct that Dockport wouldn't allow hooking up of firewire devices? The picture you put in this article of the back of an apple thunderbolt display shows the firewire connection. the image, together with your subscript suggests it could maybe allow for firewire devices... I could be wrong. But, could you please clarify the position of firewire with this Dockport adventure?JohnHardkiss - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
I didn't explicate my main point: If this Dockport protocol doesn't allow for Firewire devices to connect, clearly for many audio/video (semi)professionals Thunderbolt will be the obvious choice.extide - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Unless there is a firewire to USB chip out there, then no it will not allow you to do that. However, I wouldn't be surprised if there is such a chip out there.This is really not targeted at that market anyways. It is more targeted to just general users.
JohnHardkiss - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
There isn't a firewire-usb converter chip or whatever. This lack of FireWire support by this Dockport protocol should be pointed out I'd say. For me,.. This protocol adds nothibg to the table over thunderbolt.stingerman - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Wondering if Apple already implemented a version in their mobile Lightning connector?extide - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
No, that is totally different.Hubb1e - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
I'm currently typing this on my 14" laptop connected to 2 external monitors a USB hub, power, and the headphone jack. While this computer needs more than the previously rumored 65W to power it (discreet graphics), I would very much welcome a cheap standard to get USB, Displayport, and power out of my mobile device. In the next few years I can see most people using a 7-10" tablet as their primary computing device so being able to dock that to a monitor (even two as displayport can be daisy chained) that includes Ethernet, USB, audio, and power would be amazing.This is exactly the standard needed to enable where I see mobile devices moving towards.
psuedonymous - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
It sounds a bit like a much cut-down version of Lenovo's OneLink docking cable (used in newer Thinkpad Edge devices, and the Thinkpad Yoga).LordOfTheBoired - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
I was thinking it sounded like a modernized version of VESA's previous Plug and Display standard. DisplayPort and USB3 instead of proto-DVI and USB2.And no one used P&D... as-is.
Apple hacked it into something proprietary first(change the shell, rearrange some pins, and reverse the power feed so instead of the monitor powering the computer, the computer powered the monitor. INNOVATION!). For a while, the Apple Display Connector was the only way to hook a monitor to a Mac(without an adapter).
The Digital Display Working Group took P&D and stripped everything but the video signals out and released it as DVI(INNOVATION!). As you doubtless know, EVERYONE used DVI.
That said, I would LOVE to see DockPort take off. There's really not a compelling reason to NOT run USB over the video cable. It's a cheap standard, makes monitors with USB hubs VERY easy, and provides a convenient interface for system-side control of the display. But history makes me doubt it will.
repoman27 - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
DockPort is a crap way to combine USB 3.0 and DisplayPort on the same cable though. If they left the DP 1.2 signaling pairs alone and upgraded the AUX channel to support USB 3.0 with USB Power Delivery it would be another matter entirely. Trying to use the stock mini-DP connector was a mistake. With micro-DP and DP 1.3 looming, they have the opportunity to do it properly and not require tethered cables and host-side hardware to mux the signals.I guess we might as well use the bandwidth DP 1.2 provides for something while we're waiting for the 4K and MST revolution to finally happen? DockPort just seems like a step in the wrong direction though.
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
Neat. Let's hope this gets adopted instead of plain Displayport as the natural progression to Displayport continues.If only VESA were compelling Freesync-like technology on a wide scale, then perhaps new Displayport standards might matter.
Hrel - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
Great, I'm glad were still able to avoid the trap of proprietary licensing. It's an industry killer, which makes me upset Intel, like the old Dell, keeps trying to do it.***Someone PLEASE answer this for me!
WHY does display port even exist? The last time I looked at the HDMI spec it supported bandwidth FAR beyond what even 4K and 7.1 surround sound could saturate. Furthermore taking the display out of this new DockPort standard would increase transfer speeds, which I'm far more interested in than consolidating 2 cables into 1.
My preferred solution would be HDMI for audio/video and DockPort for accessories, like hard drives and mice and things. But I guess that depends on the answer I receive about HDMI and DP.
Does HDMI have licensing fees for vendor's to use it?
repoman27 - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
HDMI was created for the consumer electronics industry to to carry the then common DVI TMDS signal along with multichannel audio and a healthy amount of DRM over a single cable with compact, consumer friendly, friction-fit connectors, and yes, it does indeed require licensing. The original target was 1080p60 HDTV and easy adaptability, so the early versions of HDMI used the exact same video signal as single-link DVI, and thus had the same bandwidth limitations (1920x1200, 24 bpp, 60 Hz max). Later versions increased the maximum clock rate enabling support for higher resolutions, higher color depths and 3D formats, added Ethernet and audio return channels, etc. However, even HDMI 1.4b (the most recent version to actually be found in shipping devices at this point) only supports resolutions up to 3840x2160p30 at 24 bpp. The recently released HDMI 2.0 spec bumps the maximum clock rate up once again to support up to 18 Gbit/s of bandwidth, which is on par with the 17.28 Gbit/s of DisplayPort 1.2, and is enough to handle 4K UHD resolutions at 60 Hz.DisplayPort was created to replace DVI and VGA in the PC space, was designed around a packet based protocol, and is royalty free. Even the original version offered 8.64 Gbit/s of bandwidth, or slightly more than the 8.16 Gbit/s of HDMI 1.3/1.4. DP 1.2 doubled that to 17.28 Gbit/s and (thanks to AMD) has been shipping for 3 years now. DisplayPort has always been more focused on PC display features, such as supporting higher resolutions and multiple display streams over a single port / cable, and has been slower to adopt more consumer (read television) oriented features. By using a packet based protocol, DisplayPort frees itself from requiring a separate TMDS timing source for each display output. This is why AMD GPUs can only drive 2 displays using HDMI / DVI, but can manage 6 via DisplayPort. For many years now, all Intel and AMD GPUs have featured flexible digital display output ports that can support either DisplayPort or TMDS signaling. NVIDIA has been a little slow to join the DP bandwagon for some reason, but I believe Kepler supports DP 1.2 across the board.
Taking the display out of DockPort would leave nothing but USB.
LordOfTheBoired - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
DisplayPort exists because DVI/HDMI is a crap standard. It was never really designed to drive LCD monitors, and has a lot of CRT-specific legacy CRAP embedded in the signal that any monitor being driven by DVI or HDMI has to scrape away before it can reconstruct the frame. There are apparently also issues with the actual transmission spec that make it(in either form) ill-suited for long runs and require a solid chunk of logic in the display to reconstruct a horribly malformed signal.Higher resolutions and color depths are making this a bigger problem every day, and it's my understanding that a lot of people are surprised they managed to get UHD working on the existing HDMI cable in the first place.
azazel1024 - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
I agree with the replies about being a dumb way to go about it.With Displayport 1.3 they should have just changed connectors to support at least 1 full USB3 channel, or better yes, 1 full USB3.1 channel, since that is neigh, plus full display port 1.3.
I am much less familar with HDMI, but what hurdles would there be to implementing it through that? It seems like the connectors have a lot more signaling wires (I could obviously be mistaken). What about simply muxing or carrying USB3 over HDMI?
HDMI is significantly more common than display port on both displays, TVs and on laptops/video cards. I know HDMI can already carry ethernet (I assume it is 100Mbps, not 1Gbps though).
I guess due to commonality, I would be much more interested if it was HDMI, with Gigabit ethernet PLUS USB3.0 carried over the same wire, through the same port. Then you have options for full size, mini and micro connectors to suit your needs.
repoman27 - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
It's a little trickier to do it with HDMI, but MHL essentially manages to do it the other way around (muxing HDMI over a USB port).DisplayPort is the far more capable spec, and is actually ubiquitous in the PC space, although sadly OEMs seem to enjoy hiding it from end users whenever possible.
The problem with combining HDMI, GbE, USB 3.0 and power delivery all on the same cable becomes evident when you add up the number of signaling pairs you'd need to to carry all those protocols at the same time. (4 for the TMDS data and clock for HDMI, 4 for 1000BASE-T style Ethernet, 1 for USB 2.0, 2 for SuperSpeed USB...) We're at 22 conductors before we even get to power, ground and shielding. That's going to be one stout cable, and the connectors will hardly be "micro", not to mention that the interference potential of having that many signals running at totally different frequencies in the same cable is huge. Muxing the signals might reduce pin / conductor count, but also gets messy real quick.
This is exactly why Thunderbolt was born. DisplayPort, Ethernet, PCIe: they're all just packets. Just create one high-speed dual carriageway, dump them all on there and send them on their way. Muxing at the packet level is the way to go. Unfortunately, with Thunderbolt, it's also the expensive, proprietary, Intel only way to go.
GhostBirdofPrey - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
I don't understand why they didn't redesign the connector to be a superset of the current standard miniDP connector. The cable had to be redesigned so they might as well have redone the connector then they would have been able to add a couple extra datalines for the USB to reduce the need for multiplexing (and also possibly more power lines for increased amperage to power and charge the connected device)Also as a superset it would be similar to how USB 3.0 got a redesigned connector, more connections allows more throughput but by containing the old connector everything is backwards compatible still.
===
Still display+usb+power in one cable is something I have wanted as a standard for a long time now.
POPAJOE - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
I would like to say thanks to them and could we get a firewrie adapter out of this good new's we hope; this is and would be greatly need by so many.;popajoe thanks you so much's :