Intel today said that it will work with AMD, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and LG to completely phase out analog display technologies and transition the industry to digital interfaces such as HDMI as well as DisplayPort. It is about time, given the confusion of HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI and VGA that seem to be meeting on PCs that are being upgraded with new displays and/or graphics cards these days.
However, the transition will take some time and is not going to take place over night. Intel said that it plans on dropping VGA support in its platforms by 2015 and LVDS (low-voltage differential signaling technology) by 2013. AMD will be begin removing LVDS and VGA support in 2013 as well and expects to be VGA-free in 2015. VGA has been around for more than 20 years.
The transition may take even longer for displays, as Intel noted that VGA ports will remain on back panels of monitors well beyond 2015. "Modern digital display interfaces like DisplayPort and HDMI enhance the consumer visual PC experience by immersing them with higher resolutions and deeper colors - all at lower power - to enhance battery life for laptops," said Eric Mentzer, Intel’s vice president of Strategy, Planning and Operations for the Visual and Parallel Computing Group. AMD's Eric Demers noted that the company believes DisplayPort 1.2 is the future for computer displays, while HDMI 1.4a and beyond will be focused on TV connectivity.
The VGA connector was originally designed by IBM in 1987. The standard supports display resolutions ranging from 640 x 400 pixels to 2048 x 1536 pixels.
Source: Intel
