g4cube

palegolas said:

I hope all 4 ports will be full capacity Thunderbolt 3 ports! I guess there might be a total bandwidth limit to what the portable version of Kaby Lake can actually pull off. 40Gb x 4.. is that within the specs? Would be awesome.

4 Thunderbolt 3 ports would require 2 separate Alpine Ridge I/O chips; most laptops have only 2 Thunderbolt ports because that is all the Thunderbolt 3 chip supports.

There could be 2 Type-C connectors that are charging/USB only, leaving the other 2 for be all inclusive Thunderbolt/USB/display etc.

One thing of note that will make things confusing. The only thing guaranteed by a Type-C connector is USB 2.0 performance and power. Anything else is optional:
- USB 3.1 gen1 (essentially USB 3.0 spec)
- USB 3.1 gen2 (the 10Gbps flavour)
- DisplayPort
- Power Delivery for charging (note, there are several flavors of this, too)
- Thunderbolt 3

I expect "it just works" will be hard to achieve, as simply having a Type-C connector, there is no guarantee of the capabilities without some intelligent labeling. I know that Intel has required certain superset of capabilities if the Thunderbolt logo is used on the connector.

I don't think it is the Intel processors delaying new Macs, but rather the infancy of USB 3.1 gen2 and Thunderbolt 3.

Sure, Thunderbolt 3 computers with 6th generation Skylake processors have been shipping since Fall 2015, but there don't seem to be many peripherals shipping. There definitely appears to be a problem getting robust, reliable peripherals and cables that can operate at these phenomenal new speeds. Yess, those computers also shipped with USB 3.1 gen2 and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity via Type-C connectors, but where are the real peripheral products?