By Hezi Saar

HDMI is the de-facto standard for consumer electronics with its adoption in TVs, multimedia electronics and even smart phones. DisplayPort is an open industry standard promoted by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), with many companies supporting the standard. But leading electronic manufacturers, mainly in computing and display applications, are all counting on the dominance of HDMI.

DisplayPort has several advantages over HDMI aside from being royalty free. It has the ability to be used in embedded applications as opposed to using external connector applications, as with HDMI. DisplayPort appears to be common in many computing platforms because the proliferation and distribution of digital-video and digital-audio content are driving product development in both computing and consumer electronics – converging in the home network.

The fact that laptops and desktops offer DisplayPort interfaces will help create consumer demand for appliances with receiver capability to connect the computing device at home and broadcast multimedia. The belief is that this convergence will require adoption of DisplayPort in addition to HDMI in the short term, but can these standards survive together?

Typically SoC architectural decisions are made early in the design cycle, but the decision regarding which standards to implement is only made several months prior to tape out. A typical cycle can take more than a year and approximately two years until the SoC reaches the harsh reality of the marketplace.

As markets evolve, especially with respect to the DisplayPort and HDMI uncertainty, the risk of designing with Standard A, and but not Standard B, can impact the success of the product and even the company. Which way do you go with a multimedia interface as you design your SoC or system?

Would a universal multimedia interface implementation that is compact be the ideal solution?

Hezi Saar is Virage Logic’s senior marketing manager for SiPro Advanced Interface IP