What ports are they going to use. Thunderbolt is an Intel port. Has USB 4 been implemented?
Not quite.
" This copper-based version of the Light Peak concept was co-developed by
Apple and
Intel. Apple registered
Thunderbolt as a
trademark, but later transferred the mark to Intel, which held overriding intellectual-property rights. "
"
On 24 May 2017, Intel announced that Thunderbolt 3 would become a
royalty-free standard to OEMs and chip manufacturers in 2018, as part of an effort to boost the adoption of the protocol.
[74] The Thunderbolt 3 specification was later released to the USB-IF on 4 March 2019, making it royalty-free, to be used to form
USB4.
[75][76][77] Intel says it will retain control over certification of all Thunderbolt 3 devices.
[78] Intel also states it employs "mandatory certification for all Thunderbolt products."
[79]
Before March 2019, there were no
AMD chipsets or computers with Thunderbolt support released or announced due to the certification requirements (Intel did not certify non-Intel platforms). However, the
YouTuber Wendell Wilson from Level1 Techs was able to get Thunderbolt 3 support on an AMD computer with a
Threadripper CPU and Titan Ridge add-in card working by modifying the firmware, indicating that the lack of Thunderbolt support on non-Intel systems is not due to any hardware limitations.
[80][81] As of May 2019, it is possible to have Thunderbolt 3 support on AMD using add-in cards without any problems,
[82] and motherboards like ASRock
X570 Creator already have Thunderbolt 3 port.
[83]
In January 2020 Intel certified
[84] ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming ITX/TB3 and now vendors are freely allowed to produce Thunderbolt controller silicon (even though those ASRock motherboards used Intel Titan Ridge).
[85]
"
So besides the history of the development of the technology, implementing Thunderbolt in AS is not an issue at all and future AS based Mac products will support the technology.