Last week, we learned that next-gen AMD GPUs will likely support HDMI 2.2 with up to 80Gbps bandwidth. HDMI Forum announced the HDMI 2.2 specification back in CES 2025 in January, but now it has been made available to manufacturers for wide adoption.
HDMI 2.2 sports maximum bandwidths of 96Gbps, which is double that of what was offered by the previous version, HDMI 2.1. Higher resolutions with higher refresh rates are also supported, these include 12K at 120fps, along with 16K at 60fps. In addition, uncompressed full chroma formats like 8K@60/4:4:4 and 4K@240/4:4:4 at 10- and 12-bit color options are supported too. Notably, the HDMI 2.2 specification also offers the Latency Indication Protocol (LIP), which enhances audio and video synchronization, especially in configurations with multi-hop hardware.
Chandlee Harrell, president of the HDMI Forum, had the following to say regarding this milestone:
The HDMI Forum is proud to release the new HDMI 2.2 Specification to enable higher performance capabilities and features for exciting and immersive new solutions and products. And the introduction of the new Ultra96 feature name will help consumers and end-users ensure their product’s maximum bandwidth is supported.
The HDMI Forum has encouraged manufacturers to adopt the "Ultra96" branding on any HDMI 2.2 product that supports 64Gbps, 80Gbps, or 96Gbps bandwidth. They will also need to leverage the Ultra96 HDMI Cable as the existing Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable only supports a maximum of 48Gbps bandwidth. That said, it is pertinent to note that an HDMI 2.2 cable may only support the 64Gbps mode, but still have the Ultra96 branding, which could be confusing.
The HDMI authority has also reminded cable manufacturers that Ultra96 cables will have to go through the regular certification process, which mandates the testing of model length too. It will be interesting to see how quickly and widely HDMI 2.2 gets adopted by manufacturers as well as the public.