This might be the one connector standard to rule them all: a group of 50-plus Chinese companies has co-developed a new standard called General Purpose Media Interface (GPMI), and according to ITHome, it’s meant to unify both power and data signals into one cable for media devices, with the standard capable of delivering up to 192Gbps of bandwidth plus 480W of power delivery.
New GPMI Standard
The GPMI standard will feature in two form factors, Type-B and Type-C. The former likely employs a proprietary connector to meet the bandwidth and power requirements, as evidenced the photo above; however, the Type-C variant is essentially the same as regular USB-C connector with 96Gbps / 240W, similar to the specs of Thunderbolt 5 standard – that is, 80Gbps/120Gbps bandwidth and up to 240W of power.
This means the new connector will be significantly better than today’s HDMI and DisplayPort standards, with the former (HDMI 2.1 FRL) supporting 48Gbps and the latter (DP 2.1 UHBR20) supporting 80Gbps, capable of delivering 8K resolutions to displays that support it. The addition of power delivery meant it’ll be technically possible for displays supporting the standard to negate a separate power connection; besides that, it also supports remote control features similar to HDMI-CEC.
Whether this cable will be widely adopted will be another matter, as the member of the GPMI standardization group is exclusively consisting of Chinese companies with big names like HiSilicon, HUAWEI, Haier, Hisense, TCL, BOE, SHARP, Hikvision, Skyworth, along with various institutions in the country. Should the standard be royalty-free or even going open-source, it should greatly help with adoption if companies outside China are onboard.
Pokdepinion: Sounds good on paper – I do wonder if that means the power supply of the host device will have to be a lot beefier to deliver all 480 watts of power to these cables.
