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MacOS AMI images, EBS disks, VPC networking, 10gbps ENA. Bare metal only, Intel available now, M1 coming soon. This is another game changer.

The post says they’re based on Mac Minis, but also use AWS Nitro. Is this custom AWS specific hardware?

Right. The Nitro cards speak PCIe, and Thunderbolt is “just” PCIe plus DP in one:

> Thunderbolt combines PCI Express (PCIe) and DisplayPort (DP) into two serial signals,[7][8] and additionally provides DC power, all in one cable.

Yes, AIUI AWS Nitro is a PCI (in this case thunderbolt?) disk abstraction system that fronts EBS for the host.

That sounds elegant for IO, but I wonder how device level security is handled, out of band management, and firmware updates.

BSDP + IPKVM?