My 2021 iPad Pro has USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4. Why not just go with that and be done with it for a while…
Interesting learning moment: Thunderbolt was developed by Intel “in partnership with Apple”. I didn’t know that. I also didn’t know Intel stopped licensing fees on Thunderbolt 3 and it is now free to use standard.
But it is important to know the SOC/CPU needs Thunderbolt 4 “hardware”(using it as a generic term) just as SOC/CPU needs USB “hardware”. But press the breaks for thunderbolt 5, USB 4.2 is here.
From The Verge:
“If these (Thunderbolt 5) specs sound familiar, it’s because they’re very similar to the ones the USB Promoter Group announced last month with the reveal of USB 4 version 2.0. The official specification for that standard, released on Tuesday, shows that it’s also capable of the 120 / 40Gbps communication that Intel says makes next-gen Thunderbolt great for “video-intensive usages.” (Read: powering a bunch of high-resolution, high refresh rate displays.)
The similarity isn’t a secret; Intel’s press release says that its next Thunderbolt spec will be “built on the USB4 v2 specification,” and it says that its demo is “aligned” to the USB Implementers Forum’s official release. This raises an obvious question: why bother making another version of Thunderbolt if it’s basically going to be the same as the latest and greatest USB spec?”