What do we get? Thunderbolt 4, USB4, or something else?

[mrmister]

Just wondering what we'll see on our Apple Silicon Macs. Top contenders are:

Thunderbolt 4—looks like Thunderbolt 3, but somewhat new? No increase in top speed.

USB4, which is the same (?) as Thunderbolt 3?

or USB-C, which is what the dev kit has—same connector as all of these, but that one is called...USB-C.

What are the differences between these three?

And which one, if you were betting, will Apple actually ship in those Macs?

 

[MyopicPaideia]

USB4 gets my vote. It is essentially TB3 wrapped in USB branding, and Apple was heavily involved in making it so. Timing is perfect for projected TTM for the first Apple Silicon Mac.

• Apple Silicon Mac, first to market with USB4
• Fully backwards compatible with both TB3 and USB-C, so everything “just works.”

 

[Falhófnir]

TB4 would almost be better described as a refinement of TB3 honestly, there are improvements, but they're housekeeping rather than anything particularly major. USB 4 seems the best option, time to try and bring competing standards back together to finally realise the universal dream of type C.

 

[mrmister]

Here's my prayer—please decide once, and that's it, and it is the same on every apple silicon mac.

Hahahahhhahhahahh nah

 

[endlessike]

Apple promises to support Thunderbolt on its new ARM Macs

Thunderbolt is coming to Apple silicon

www.theverge.com

/thread over, everyone go home

 

[MyopicPaideia]

Apple promises to support Thunderbolt on its new ARM Macs

Thunderbolt is coming to Apple silicon

www.theverge.com

/thread over, everyone go home

Yeah, but it won’t be TB4, it will be fully TB3 compliant USB4. TB4 is Intel CPU only due to the certification requirements including a security protocol that is Intel CPU specific.

So...I take that back! I have been informed on another thread that Intel has clarified that they are open to certifying other forms of DMA protection besides their own, so TB4 isn’t out of the question etiher.

 

[mrmister]

I saw that, glad they said something!

 

[KPOM]

We’ll get Thunderbolt 4. Intel and Apple won’t burn bridges. x86 is a commodity business for Intel now, anyway. They sold Apple their cellular chipset business, and still have decent, if no longer industry leading fabs. Who’s to say 10 years from now TSMC won’t be having process issues while Intel is advancing to 1nm GaN technology?

 

[JPack]

TB3

USB4 won't be available until 2022 as per Kuo.