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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Following the recent reorganization of AMD's (Advanced Micro Devices) GPU assets under the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), AMD is talking about its 2016 GPU plans [anandtech.com].

2016 Radeon GPUs will support DisplayPort 1.3 & HDMI 2.0a. DisplayPort 1.3 will allow for 5K and even 8K resolution over a single cable, as well as 4K at the higher refresh rates (75+ Hz) needed for AMD's FreeSync Low Framerate Compensation to work. FreeSync will also work over HDMI (which is cheaper and more commonly used than DisplayPort):

Implemented over a customized version of HDMI 1.4a and utilizing a prototype Realtek timing controller, AMD was able to demonstrate variable refresh rate technology running over HDMI. At the time of the presentation AMD was very clear that the purpose of the presentation was to shop around the concept and to influence the various members of the HDMI consortium, but they were also clear that bringing variable refresh rate tech to HDMI was something the company wanted to bring to retail sooner than later. Sooner, as it turns out, was the operative word there. As part of their presentation last week, RTG has announced that FreeSync over HDMI will be heading to retail, and that it will be doing so very soon: Q1'16. This is just a year after the first DisplayPort adaptive sync monitors hit retail, which for a display technology is a rather speedy turnaround from proof of concept to retail product.

The first FreeSync-capable laptop, the Lenovo Y700, was announced by the RTG, however it only supports a small range from 40 Hz to 60 Hz.

AMD is also promoting its support for high dynamic range [wikipedia.org] (HDR). HDR monitors will have increased contrast ratios, able to display using increased luminance for bright spots [tomshardware.com] while displaying darker blacks:

Getting there is going to take a lot of effort. Content needs to be mastered, distributed and displayed differently than what we're accustomed to. This time next year, we'll hopefully see LCD-based screens able to hit 2000 nits of luminance—a big improvement over the 471 cd/m² attained by the brightest UHD monitor [tomshardware.com] we've reviewed thus far. But even that's a far cry from the BT.2020 color space.

Still, Kim Meinerth, senior fellow and system architect, assured us that AMD put significant effort into building a display pipeline that supports the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers' 10-bit ST 2084 electro-optical transfer function, which is much better at mimicking human vision than today's BT.1886 curve.

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