08-04-2025
Chinese HDMI Rival Offers Double the Bandwidth and Near 500W Power
A Chinese conglomerate has debuted a new cable standard that could rival entrenched cables like HDMI and USB-C. The new General Purpose Media Interface, or GPMI, reportedly offers up to 192Gbps of bandwidth (more than double that of HDMI 2.2), as well as power delivery of up to 480W and networking support. It's even USB-C compatible. If these specifications prove true, it would make the GPMI the most capable cable standard in the world and by quite some margin.
When it comes to video and audio transmission cables, the premier standards used in most modern TVs, monitors, and external displays are HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C. HDMI 2.2 is the latest and greatest of that standard and can offer bandwidth up to 96Gbps, giving it support for 8K resolution and 4K at up to 240Hz, but it doesn't support power delivery. USB-C can go up to 80Gbps with USB4 and it can deliver up to 240W, as well as offering networking support. DisplayPort 2.1b is capable of up to 80Gbps, with similar resolution and refresh rate support to HDMI 2.2, but it can't deliver power.
Can you see why a USB-C capable 192Gbps cable with up to 480W of power delivery would be game-changing? That's what GPMI purports to be.
HDMI connectors are standard on every display, but I'm not sure manufacturers will want to add a competitor. Credit: Jason Cohen/PCMag
The Shenzhen 8K UHD Video Industry Cooperation Alliance suggests that the GPMI standard has two headers: a Type-C connector, which is compatible with USB-C and offers 96Gbps and up to 240W power delivery, and a proprietary Type-B connector. That design gives the full 192Gbps and 480W of power, as per TechSpot.
On top of its raw specifications, the technology group behind the cable claims it can also be daisy chained for streamlined cabling over longer distances. It supports HDMI-CEC, so you can control multiple devices connected over GPMI using a single remote. It's already been licensed by the USB Implementer Forum, so is ready for official USB-C interoperability, and there are said to be up to 50 companies working on using the new standard, including major display companies like TCL and Hisense.
This is very promising for GPMI and suggests it will find a big market in China, at least. The question is whether companies that are more interested in selling to Western markets will consider it. Although it represents a big upgrade over the capabilities of HDMI and USB-C, those standards are embedded in a range of devices, and backward compatibility is a major selling point of their continued use.
Switching to a compatible solution might work, but GPMI's real capabilities appear to be in its proprietary standard. Breaking that into established markets will be far harder.
