The company promises that they will still support Intel's Thunderbolt USB-C connectivity standard for new Apple silicon computers despite the lack of Intel processors. Apple will move away from Intel's chipsets in favor of its new ARM chips.
"Apple worked together with Intel over a decade ago to design and develop Thunderbolt, which is the speed and flexibility that Apple brings to every Mac nowadays. We remain committed to Thunderbolt 's future and support Apple silicon in Macs, "an Apple spokesman commented in a statement to The Verge.
There was some concern that Apple might lose support for Thunderbolt on its upcoming Macs, but it makes a lot of sense for Apple to stick to the standard since it had worked with Intel to help develop the original Thunderbolt standard.
Despite this collaboration, however, Apple still has to support any product outside the Intel-powered Mac, especially the Apple ARM-based iPad Pro, with a regular USB-C port, not a Thunderbolt 3 connector. The Apple Developer Transition Kit based on ARM is only equipped with USB-C standard ports.
The news is that Intel detailed its upcoming Thunderbolt 4 Standard, based on USB4 spec and using the same USB-C connector as Thunderbolt 3 does today. Both Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 offer more guaranteed functionality than the standard USB 3 and USB4 standards they are built-out (such as the ability to power external monitors or load laptops) with the consistency which can often lack standard USB C standard.
Thunderbolt 4, in particular, has the same 40 Gbps of Thunderbolt 3, but it also provides more stringent hardware requirements for manufacturers, allowing devices to support two 4 K displays or an 8 K display and PCIe data transfer speeds up to 32 Gbps – booning external storage and external GPUs.
Apple is expected to launch its first ARM-based Macs by the end of 2020. In two years , Apple will completely move its product line-up to its own chips.
