VESA Issues Call for Technology: Advanced Display Stream Compression

VESA has issued a Call for Technology (CfT) to standardize a coding system for Advanced Display Stream Compression (A-DSC). The CfT includes requirements that apply to solutions, evaluation criteria, and required items to be submitted. VESA’s goal is to standardize a visually lossless coding system to be used for compression of high-bandwidth video at lower compressed bit rates than are possible with DSC 1.1.

Proposals may be either full solutions or may consist simply of possible tools or improvements that might be used to achieve the stated requirements.

Purpose

The advanced display stream coding system intends to meet these objectives:

  • Target applications that require a lower bits per pixel (bpp) compressed bit rate than DSC 1.1 (i.e., significantly less than 8bpp) while still providing visually lossless subjective coding quality at least as good as DSC 1.1. In exchange for improved compression, A-DSC will require more complex encoders and decoders than DSC 1.1. As such, A-DSC is not intended to deprecate DSC 1.1; rather, it will complement it by allowing applications to target a different tradeoff of bpp versus complexity.
  • Support TV and monitor panel resolutions larger than could be supported by DSC 1.1 in some systems with link bandwidth constraints
  • Support mobile display resolutions larger than could be supported by DSC 1.1 in some systems with link bandwidth constraints
  • Reduce the memory size required for frame buffer in display controller or driver IC applications

The advanced display stream coding system will have the following properties:

  • On-the-fly, real-time coding with low complexity hardware and small-sized memory in both the encoder and the decoder. Higher complexity is allowable in an encoder than a decoder, since encoders tend to be implemented in more advanced technology than decoders, and generally encoders are more complex than decoders.
  • Coded bit streams that can be transported over different link types

Download the CfT