VESA Display Power Management Signaling

VESA Display Power Management Signaling (or DPMS) is a standard from the VESA consortium for managing the power supply of video monitors for computers through the graphics card. Example usage includes shutting off the monitor after a period of idle time to save power.

History

VESA issued DPMS 1.0 in 1993, basing their work on the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) earlier Energy Star power management specifications. Subsequent revisions were included in future VESA BIOS Extensions.

Design

The standard defines how to signal the H-sync and V-sync pins in a standard SVGA monitor to trigger the monitor's power saving capabilities.

DPMS defines four modes; normal, standby, suspended and off. When in the "off" state some power may still be drawn in order to power indicator lights.

The standard is:

State	H-sync	V-sync	Power	Recovery Time
On	On	On	100%	n/a
Stand-by	Off	On	< 80%	~1 Sec.
Suspend	On	Off	< 30W	~5 Sec.
Off	Off	Off	< 8W	~20 Sec.

See also

• Digital Monitor Power Management
• Screensaver
• DOS Protected Mode Services (DPMS) - unrelated memory management standard

External links

• VESA Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS) Standard (requires purchase of the specification)
• VESA Standards Listing