The DVI Standard consists of a transmitter chip on the computer and a receiver chip on

the monitor, a DVI cable connecting the DVI ports on the computer and monitor and the
underlying protocol used for the transmission of video signals from the computer to the
monitor.
In recent years the CRT monitor is being rapidly replaced by the LCD monitor.
CRTs have analog inputs, a PC must take an additional step and convert the digital data,
essentially a string of digital ones and zeros, into analog voltages before it can be
transmitted to a CRT monitor. This is done through a digital to analog converter
(RAMDAC) in the PC.
LCD’s are inherently digital devices, and for the display on an LCD using the
VGA port, the PC must convert the data to analog format, as is the case with a CRT
monitor. Then, the LCD monitor must have an analog to digital converter (ADC) and
associated logic to convert the signal back to digital ones and zeros before it can be
shown on the display. This is as shown below.

LCD to VGA interface

This digital to analog conversion and subsequent analog to digital conversion results in
signal degradation and delay during transmission and conversion
The implementation using DVI Standard is as shown below.

LCD to DVI interface

The underlying protocol used for DVI is TMDS or transition minimized

differential signaling, as such DVI uses a TMDS transmitter on the computer and TMDS
receiver on the monitor.

The TMDS transmitter can be implemented –

1) On the motherboard directly

2) As an ADD card which plugs into the PCIe slot.

ADD Card
3) As a graphics card which plugs into the PCIe slot.

Graphics Card

The difference between a graphics card and an add card is – the graphics card
has graphics processor unit useful for application which require accelerated graphics like
games, whereas the add card just consists of the TMDS transmitter and is generally
cheaper.

TMDS serves as the underlying protocol for the DVI, HDMI and many other
digital standards. TMDS protocol is capable of transferring up to 225 Mhz while the DVI
standard based on it can support up to 165 Mhz in a single-link configuration. The 165
MHz bandwidth can support a resolution of 1600x1200 at a 60 Hz refresh rate.
Multiplying all three we get 115200000 or 115.2 Mhz. The rest of the bandwidth is used
for clock and associated signaling.
A single link DVI using TMDS protocol is as shown below.

Single Link DVI

To drive an LCD and light up a pixel, three color components are required: Red,
Green and Blue (RGB). Each color component has 8 bits that allow 256 different color
shades to be selected. Using a combination of 256 shades for each color (RGB) allows up
to 16 million colors to be displayed. The graphics controller outputs 24 bits in parallel
with 8 bits representing each color component to the TMDS transmitter.
The TMDS transmitter converts 8 parallel bits representing a color component
into 8serial bits. TMDS then uses an advanced encoding algorithm to minimize
transitions and at the same time generate a DC Balanced Sequence.

Properties of TMDS

1) Transition Minimization
Transition Minimization is carried out to prevent the generation of radio
frequencies (which may affect other electronic devices) due to frequent 1-0 and 0-1
transitions.
Transition minimization is achieved by carrying out an XNOR operation on the sequence
and selecting the sequence which has minimum transitions. A 9th bit is added to indicate
whether an XNOR operation was carried out or not. For example, consider the sequence
–

The first bit is retained as it is and is XNORed with the second bit to generate the
transition minimized 2nd bit. This 2nd bit is again XNORed with the 3rd bit of the original
sequence to generate the 3rd transition minimized bit and so on. The generated sequence is
–

A 9th bit is added as a 1 to indicate transition minimization encoding has been carried out,
resulting in the sequence-

2) Dc Balanced Sequence
Transmitting a long series of 1’s or 0’s at high speeds results in the charging of
the line, the charge on the cable tends to resist the subsequent change of data to the
opposite state and will cause data errors. The method used to overcome this is known as
DC Balancing and involves inverting some of the bits in the sequence and marking them
as inverted.
Consider a long sequence of 1’s as shown below.

We then pick one word (8 bits) from the series of words that have the same state and add
the 9th bit as 0 as no transition minimization is required.

The 10th bit is set to indicate polarity reversal, giving

3) Differential Signaling
TMDS also uses differential signaling for immunity to radio interference and
other noise. Differential Signaling uses two wires with the second wire transmitting the
opposite value of the first as shown below.

At the receiver one signal is subtracted from the other cancelling out the noise.
A dual link DVI can be implemented using 2 TMDS transmitters and 2 receivers
providing a bandwidth upto 330 MHz. This is as shown below.

Dual Link DVI

There are three basic types of DVI connectors- DVI-D, DVI-I, and DVI-A.

DVI-D connector provides support only for digital signals, ie TMDS based DVI signals.

DVI-I connector provides support for digital as well as analog signals, ie it provides pins
through which analog signals or VGA signals can be transmitted. But the analog signals
to the corresponding pins in the connector needs to be given by the board or computer, ie
DVI-I connector does not perform an digital to analog conversion, but the analog signals
needs to supplied to the analog pins on the connector. The advantage of this is the same
connector or port can be used for both DVI and VGA, but only one at a time.

DVI-A connector is rare and used to connect to a DVI-I socket so as to tap only the
analog signals and map the signals onto a VGA port to support a CRT monitor.

The connector can also be of type single link or dual link to support a single or
dual link DVI. A dual link DVI-I connector and its pins are as shown below.

There are 6 data channels associated with the connector ie 2 channels for red, 2 for green
and 2 for blue giving a dual link. You also pins for transmitting analog data, and vertical
and horizontal sync pins associated with it. Plug and display is another standard for
transmission of digital data which is no longer being used because of its expensive
connectors. Signals for this standard can be passed through a DVI connector with Plug
and Display connector at the other end.