VESA Releases DockPort Standard To Compete With Thunderbolt

VESA has released the DockPort standard today from Computex that's an extension of the DisplayPort interface and allows for USB data and power charging capabilities as a royalty-free, industry standard.

DockPort goes head-to-head with Thunderbolt and tries to standardize a new docking interface for laptops / mobile devices. DockPort has been in development for some time by AMD, Texas Instruments, and other organizations while earlier this year at CES is when it became known VESA was interested in standardizing the specification. With today's firmed up specification, the DockPort extension to DisplayPort allows for USB 3.1 data capabilities and DC power while still supporting high-resolution A/V data of DisplayPort. This extension is backward compatible with all existing DisplayPort devices.

Compared to Thunderbolt so far mostly just being common to Apple MacBooks, let's hope that DockPort becomes quite widely adopted. When I was using my Retina MacBook Pro prior to switching to the new ASUS Zenbook Prime, I used Thunderbolt with a Thunderbolt Display and was incredibly convenient for having power, display, audio, and USB connectivity off one connection. Besides hoping for its wide adoption, hopefully the Linux support for DockPort will get lined up quickly and be in better shape than Linux's Thunderbolt support.

VESA's announcement of the DockPort standard can be found via this press release.