To be clear, technically an Intel iGPU shouldn't be necessary for Thunderbolt support but it seems to be something Intel mandates anyway and Apple or any other company would likely have to comply.
Well a Mac Pro will certainly not have integrated graphics, but a PCI-E card... And how Apple handles that will be interesting... Some sort of custom video card with thunderbolt data IO as well as video output...
This is what I never liked about the connector that its shared with the displayport... They should have kept it separate.
To be clear, technically an Intel iGPU shouldn't be necessary for Thunderbolt support but it seems to be something Intel mandates anyway and Apple or any other company would likely have to comply.
Well a Mac Pro will certainly not have integrated graphics, but a PCI-E card... And how Apple handles that will be interesting... Some sort of custom video card with thunderbolt data IO as well as video output...
This is what I never liked about the connector that its shared with the displayport... They should have kept it separate.
That's my point,...
Near as I can tell, the Intel spec / and certification for Thunderbolt would require an Intel video subsystem be present.
When the PC market started to get Intel Thunderbolt support it was considered a high-end option for high-end products but the highest end platform for consumers that Intel offers, LGA2011 / X79 Sandy Bridge-E, never received such support. There was no reason for this unless it didn't meet the standards that Intel itself set.
Asus had an add-in board called ThunderboltEX which was supposed to add Thunderbolt support to what they considered Thunderbolt ready motherboards via a "TB_Header". It never came to market because it was denied certification likely for the way it allowed non-Intel video support over Thunderbolt or something similar. Asus was also going to bring Thunderbolt to its AMD line of motherboards using this add-in card.
What you're suggesting is technically possible but it wont happen unless Intel signs off on it and I don't think Intel will.
So basically something has to give.
A new Mac Pro, if one ever comes, might not have Thunderbolt support. If it does it will likely have an Intel iGPU built into the CPU. That's not to say a GPU add-in card wouldn't work but it would have to integrated in a way that Intel would certify. I believe there are examples of this in the wild now with lucidlogix virtu software on the PC platform.
Or we could just put it this way, what Mac now has Intel Thunderbolt but no Intel video subsystem built in,.....?
I believe the answer to that is "not a single one".
That's not to say it will never happen but it hasn't happened so far. This gives us reason to think it might not happen any time soon,...
***edit***
Links to the Asus ThunderboltEX add-in card that never made it to market:
