In late 2003 a group of leading PC, graphics and semiconductor companies got together to plan a new digital display interface standard to meet future demands on the interface and to reduce display cost and complexity. The goal was to develop an open standard based, royalty free and extensible interface suited for both external desktop monitor and internal display interfaces, and to have it ready for implementation in products in 2006. This group was the start of the Video Electronics Standard Association (VESA) which is an international non-profit corporation that supports and sets industry wide interface standards for the PC, workstation and consumer electronics industries. 

The first generation of DisplayPort provided over 10.8Gbps of raw bandwidth, which no other display interface could match. DisplayPort also supported very long non -active cables, optional latch designs for connectors and audio support. In addition, with DisplayPort spread spectrum clocking can be enabled to reduce EMI, and souce devices such as GPUs can operate in dual-mode. The latter is valuable for it allows the same connector to transport TMDS signals to Support DVI and HDMI outputs using inexpensive level shifting adapters.