>It's not a matter of a dedicated processor block on the chip.
Yes it is. It’s just rare for any modern SoC to leave out an XHCI controller, which the Pi and countless others have in their SoC. Apple was an outlier
FWIW the A16 Bionic and earlier have a USB block, they just don't have a USB 3.0 block. They added one in the A17, probably porting over from the M1/M2.
For that matter, neither does the BCM2711 on the RPi4. It leans on an external chip -- almost as large as it -- for USB 3.0 functionality.
Yes it is. It’s just rare for any modern SoC to leave out an XHCI controller, which the Pi and countless others have in their SoC. Apple was an outlier