This time, VESA went a bit further by introducing partial frame refresh, a technique that allows the display to use power to only work on blocks that have actually changed – this is hugely convenient in a “windowed” computer world where each window is a block on the screen.
With increased resolution lead by Apple’s Retina display, it is clear that sending display data using “brute force” methods (sending the whole frame even if only part of it has changed) won’t cut it anymore. Displays are one of the most power-hungry systems in the computer, but the power that is required to refresh that information is often overlooked. While this won’t double your battery life, every power savings count. [press release]