Interesting!
It may also pave the way for Thunderbolt to go with ARM architecture, which I find more likely than AMD, unfortunately.
As long I know there is no pcie4 support yet in ARM, considering only AMD Zen2 and IBM power 8 are the only CPU architecture already out and supporting pcie4, I consider safe to bet is an AMD Zen2 based the next Mac platform, it comes sense as AMD also license Zen IP and this IP is also compatible with GloGO 7nn process where Apple owns a number of waffers in excess to keep it CPU supply chain, there's evidence in macOS apple is testing AMD APUs which implies Zen 2 CPUs, add this there is no leaks about Mali, sgi, or Apple GPU support in macOS suggesting Apple is testing a desktop or laptop full ARM, it makes sense for apple to move to AMD CPUs now, as Ryzen Threadripper are now the new Halo CPUs, also Zen CPUs have not suffer the security issues whi9 affected Intel CPU (with performance penalization), AMD Zen2 is not just faster, cheaper, attractive, safer, available, it also maybe customized for Apple by Apple as apple and manufactured by Apple did with ARM, and do not need an new version of macOS as current macOS run on amd64 instructions (AMD licensed it's 64 bit x86 implementation to Intel three decades ago), so no nightmares debugging new kernels, drivers neither having to port applications to an new CPU.
To me not just make sense, it's also a safe bet to believe there is soon a Mac loaded with AMD Zen2 based CPU.
My personal dream Mac Pro-lite would be an trashcan reinstall loaded with 8-16 core zen2 CPU each having a single Navi GPU (5500xt or 5700xt) on board and supporting 256gb ECC RAM it could be as cheap as an iMac 21 and even more powerful than most imMP configurations. Of course it won't happen.
BTW I'll be happy too having an iMac Pro with Threadripper 3 in 24-32 cores with single Vega II GPU or single WX5700 (most likely to happen).
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You did not understand my point.
MP7,1 has 8 PCIe slots, Apple have to mux/route TB3/video/audio/USB signals to any of the slots. Titan Ridge can't do that at all since it's just a PCIe device in the chain, that's why Apple used the 6 muxes and the 4 PCIe exchanges switches.
There is no difference among titan ridge tb3 header and PI3DBS16, both by definition are muxers and muxers are just an logic pcie switch peripheral both have it's own pcie address interrupt etc like another pcie peripheral, muxers only special is they mixes different kind of digital signal data buses among the target interface (as pcie ,USB, display port, audio, DC power etc).
Take a minute on Google at least educating yourself about.
www.ifixit.com
