AssimilatorFucking finally, I was honestly expecting Intel to announce Thunderbolt 6 before ASMedia got ASM4242 certified and shipped (this is also a dig at Intel because a year after their TB5 announcement there are still almost no TB5 devices).

And yes, before people remind me that it's Intel's fault for holding up the certification... it's partly Intel's fault. It's also partly AMD's fault. But it's mostly ASMedia's fault IMO, and I don't think it's unfair to criticise them when this functionality was originally supposed to launch with Zen 4, two whole years ago which is basically an eon in technology terms.

Also I just realised that TB5 will need 12 lanes of PCIe 4.0 which is basically an entire x16 slot, meanwhile AMD and Intel are gaslighting us with a single x16 slot's worth of IO connectivity. How 'bout you mofos move some of those PCIe lanes down from "HEDT" (actually server now because it's so overpriced) to consumer CPUs? Or heaven forbid, make consumer chipsets that aren't effectively worthless (the TRX40 that I am using to type this message on is from Zen 2 days, yet puts out more PCIe 4.0 lanes than AMD's "best" consumer-grade Zen 5 X870E offering - how pathetic).

TheLostSwedeYou're aware that the ASM4242 has been available since last year and has been certified for USB4 for over a year by now, right?
This is just an additional certification to show that it's Thunderbolt 4 compatible.
MSI has had this for sale for close to a year.
www.msi.com/PC-Component/USB4-PD100W-EXPANSION-CARD

AssimilatorYeah, and it has an MSI-proprietary GPIO header which means you can't use it unless you have a MSI motherboard, which means it immediately falls into the exact same hole of uselessness as the add-on TB3 cards that had a proprietary GPIO header. I don't understand why these cards need GPIO that can't be provided by the PCIe bus, and I don't understand why USB-IF can't define a standard for this if it is indeed necessary.

TheLostSwedeSo does that at least explain why it's needed?

AssimilatorI don't understand what's so special about what these cards are doing that they can't do it through the PCIe bus. And if there is something, why can't the PCIe and/or USB specs be amended to handle it, instead of this extra-proprietary-cable nonsense?