Quote Originally Posted by bamtan2 View Post
I think you are misunderstanding. that quote is talking about something different. it says a company can build an ethernet adapter that plugs into thunderbolt. meanwhile that mac site says a company cannot build a pci-e card that outputs thunderbolt because there is no way to get the video to the card.
There is nothing in the passage I quoted which indicates they are talking about Ethernet.

And yes, just like the DisplayPort functions can be used without passing a PCI-E signal to a secondary device, the PCI-E signal can be sent without piggybacking on a display signal.