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DisplayLink Inc. has announced the DL-120 and DL-160 high-performance chips that link monitors to PCs using USB 2.0. The new chips allow monitor manufacturers, PC OEMs and PC accessory companies to develop products for multimonitor computing including USB-connected monitors, video-enabled USB laptop docks, display connectivity accessories and other devices.

DisplayLink’s USB chips are the first to offer high-resolution display connectivity over a USB 2.0 connection. The high performance of the solution means that the user experience with mouse, monitor and keyboard is comparable to a conventional DVI or VGA-connected monitor. Static images in 32-bit true color are displayed without quality loss or color reduction and full-motion, DVD-quality video plays in real-time.

The DL-120 supports display resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 and the DL-160 extends support up to 1600 x 1200.

The complete DisplayLink solution is comprised of virtual graphics card (VGC) software that runs on a Windows host PC and a hardware rendering engine (HRE) inside of the DL-120 or DL-160 chip. The VGC software processes a stream of display information using the company’s patented loss-less graphics protocol and transmits it over a USB 2.0 or wireless USB link to the HRE chip that reconstructs the image on the display.

The DL-120 and DL-160 are now available in production. They are the first in a series of display connectivity solutions to come from DisplayLink. The core VGC and HRE technology can be extended to a wide range of standard connectivity technologies such as Ethernet or Wi-Fi to provide new solutions for network connected computer projectors, digital picture frames, computer-based signage and others.