VESA Display Power Management Signaling (or DPMS) is a standard

Standardization

Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....

 from the VESA

VESA

VESA is an international standards body for computer graphics founded in 1989 by NEC Home Electronics and eight other video display adapter manufacturers.VESA's initial goal was to produce a standard for 800×600 SVGA resolution video displays...

 consortium for managing the power supply of video monitors

Computer display

A monitor or display is an electronic visual display for computers. The monitor comprises the display device, circuitry, and an enclosure...

 for computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

s through the graphics card e.g.; shut off the monitor after the computer has been unused for some time (idle), to save power.

History

DPMS 1.0 was issued by VESA in 1993, and was based on the United States Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

's (EPA) earlier Energy Star

Energy Star

Energy Star is an international standard for energy efficient consumer products originated in the United States of America. It was first created as a United States government program during the early 1990s, but Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan and the European Union have also adopted...

 power management

Power management

Power management is a feature of some electrical appliances, especially copiers, computers and computer peripherals such as monitors and printers, that turns off the power or switches the system to a low-power state when inactive. In computing this is known as PC power management and is built...

 specifications. Subsequent revisions were rolled into future VESA BIOS Extensions.

Design

The standard defines how to signal the H-sync and V-sync pins in a standard SVGA

Super Video Graphics Array

Super Video Graphics Array or Ultra Video Graphics Array, almost always abbreviated to Super VGA, Ultra VGA or just SVGA or UVGA is a broad term that covers a wide range of computer display standards....

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			100 %	n/a
Stand-by			< 80 %	~1 Sec.
Suspend			< 30W	~5 Sec.
Off			< 8W	~20 Sec.

External links

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