Adaptive display compression for wireless transmission of rendered pixel data

1. A method comprising:

wirelessly transmitting rendered pixel data from a source device to a display device via a wireless channel;

monitoring the wireless channel by a wireless interface of the source device;

dynamically adjusting, at the source device, a data rate reduction process that is applied to the rendered pixel data prior to transmission from the source device based on parameters of the wireless channel provided by the wireless interface, wherein:

the parameters are based upon the monitoring; and

the dynamically adjusting the data rate reduction process comprises:

if a bandwidth of the wireless channel is adequate for uncompressed transmission of the rendered pixel data, bypassing application of the data rate reduction process;

if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 10% to 20% below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing low ratio I-frame only H.264 encoding; and

if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 30% or more below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing full H.264 mode or another data rate adaptation process that results in a high compression ratio; and

wirelessly transmitting from the source device to the display device a protocol ID to describe adjustments to the rendered pixel data, the protocol ID having a data structure comprising:

a first bit to indicate whether the data reduction process has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data;

a second bit to indicate whether an encryption process has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data;

a first field to indicate a compression type that has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data; and

a second field to indicate a compression ratio that has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein dynamically adjusting the data rate reduction process comprises dynamically adjusting the data rate reduction process further based on at least one display property of the display device.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

receiving, at the source device, an indicator of the at least one display property from the display device via the wireless channel; and

determining the at least one display property from the indicator.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the indicator comprises an Extended Display Identifier Data (EDID) message.

5. The method of claim 2 , wherein the source device comprises a desktop computer.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the display device comprises a computer display panel.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

wirelessly transmitting an indicator from the source device to the display device via the wireless channel in response to adjusting the data rate reduction process, the indicator identifying a resulting adjustment to the data rate reduction process; and

dynamically adjusting, at the display device, a data recovery process that is applied to the rendered pixel data prior to display of the rendered pixel data at the display device based on the indicator.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data rate reduction process comprises a compression process and wherein dynamically adjusting the data rate reduction process comprises increasing a compression ratio of the compression process in response to a decrease in an available bandwidth of the wireless channel and decreasing the compression ratio of the compression process in response to an increase in the available bandwidth.

9. A source device comprising:

a wireless interface to establish a wireless channel with a display device and to monitor the wireless channel;

a graphics processor to generate first rendered pixel data, wherein the first rendered pixel data is formatted into a stream of micro-packets in compliance with DisplayPort standard;

a data reduction module to apply a data reduction process on the first rendered pixel data to generate second rendered pixel data representative of the first rendered pixel data;

a display interface to provide a representation of the second rendered pixel data to the wireless interface for wireless communication to the display device via the wireless channel, the representation comprising a protocol ID having a data structure comprising:

a first bit to indicate whether the data reduction process has been applied to produce the second rendered pixel data;

a second bit to indicate whether an encryption process has been applied to produce the second rendered pixel data;

a first field to indicate a compression type that has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data; and

a second field to indicate a compression ratio that has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data; and

a transmission controller to dynamically adjust a data rate reduction process that is applied by the data reduction module to the first rendered pixel data in generating the second rendered pixel data based on parameters of the wireless channel provided by the wireless interface, the parameters are based upon the monitoring, wherein the dynamically adjusting the data rate reduction process comprises:

if a bandwidth of the wireless channel is adequate for uncompressed transmission of the first rendered pixel data, bypassing application of the data rate reduction process;

if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 10% to 20% below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing low ratio I-frame only H.264 encoding; and

if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 30% or more below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing full H.264 mode or another data rate adaptation process that results in a high compression ratio.

10. The source device of claim 9 , wherein the transmission controller is to dynamically adjust the data rate reduction process further based on at least one display property of the display device.

11. The source device of claim 10 , wherein the transmission controller is to determine the at least one display property based on an indicator of the at least one display property received from the display device via the wireless channel.

12. The source device of claim 11 , wherein the indicator comprises an Extended Display Identifier Data (EDID) message.

13. The source device of claim 9 , wherein the first rendered pixel data comprises a plurality of data packets and wherein the data reduction module is configured to separately compress or rate adapt each packet.

14. The source device of claim 9 , wherein the transmission controller further is to provide an indicator to the wireless interface for communication to the display device in response to an adjustment to the data rate reduction process, the indicator identifying the adjustment to the data rate reduction process.

15. The source device of claim 9 , whereby the dynamically adjusting the data reduction process comprises applying the data reduction process to each micro-packet of the stream of micro-packets separately.

16. The source device of claim 9 further comprising a desktop computer.

17. A display device comprising:

a wireless interface to receive first rendered pixel data from a source device via a wireless channel;

a data recovery module to apply a data recovery process and a decryption process to the first rendered pixel data to generate a second rendered pixel data;

a display panel to display one or more frames represented by the second rendered pixel data; and

a reception controller to receive a protocol ID representative of an adjustment made to a data rate reduction process applied by the source device to produce the first rendered pixel data and representative of an encryption process applied by the source device and to adjust the data recovery process and the decryption process, both adjustments based on the protocol ID, wherein the protocol ID has a data structure comprising:

a first bit to indicate whether the data reduction process has been applied to produce the first rendered pixel data;

a second bit to indicate whether the encryption process has been applied to produce the first rendered pixel data;

a first field to indicate a compression type that has been applied to produce the first rendered pixel data; and

a second field to indicate a compression ratio that has been applied to produce the first rendered pixel data,

wherein the adjustment made to the data rate reduction process applied by the source device comprises:

if a bandwidth of the wireless channel is adequate for uncompressed transmission of the first rendered pixel data, bypassing application of the data rate reduction process;

if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 10% to 20% below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing low ratio I-frame only H.264 encoding; and

if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 30% or more below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing full H.264 mode or another data rate adaptation process that results in a high compression ratio.

18. The display device of claim 17 , wherein the protocol ID comprises a DisplayPort Configuration Data (DPCD) value.

19. The display device of claim 17 , wherein:

the rendered pixel data is formatted into a stream of micro-packets in compliance with the DisplayPort standard;

applying the data reduction process comprises applying the data reduction process to each micro-packet of the stream of micro-packets separately; and

receiving the protocol ID representative of the encryption process applied by the source device comprises receiving a protocol ID representative of an encryption process for each micro-packet of the stream of micro-packets separately.

20. The display device of claim 17 , wherein the first field is 8 bits and the second field is 8 bits.