Then Ivy Bridge, then Haswell. Crystalwell (laptop-only L4 cache version). Broadwell. Skylake. Ice-lake. Skylake-X. Sapphire Rapids. Etc. etc.
All under the "Core i7" name, despite being a ton of different computers.
---------
The "innovation" was realizing that customers want a long-running name based on price. The Intel i7 is the $300 processor, be it from 2008 or from 2020. Customers otherwise don't really care about the specific hardware details (AVX, BMI instructions, 256-bit or 128-bit Load/store mechanisms. AVX512, etc. etc.)
For the technical people who DO care about those details, Intel (and AMD) release manuals on the details. We know its more important to read the number that comes after the name. "Ryzen 9 3950k", the "3950" is way more important from an architectural perspective than the "Ryzen 9" part.
The "Ryzen 9" or "Core i7" part is just simplified marketing, for the people who are more concerned with price points than technical details.
Ryzen 3, 5, 7 and 9 are like your Core i3, i5, i7 and i9 - market differentiators.
I agree that when you start looking at the actual model numbers, they're all over the place. Zen 2 laptop products are 4000 series, but Zen 2 desktop products are 3000. I think this was a mistake, personally.
Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite
or the handheld ones
Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advanced, Game Boy Advanced SP, Game Boy Advanced Micro, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS Lite, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo DSi XL
Which is a whole heck of a lot worse than the Wii U, in my opinion.
The really confusing part is, is that the Ryzen 4000 APUs will be zen2 architecture but the desktop CPUs without APUs or the mobile Ryzen 4000 series are zen3 architecture.
I suspect they do this because the APUs typically launch half a year after the GPU-less variants and
What's really confusing and unfortunate is that there are some Ryzen 1000 series variants (Ryzen 3 1200, Ryzen 5 1600) that were re-released well over a year after their initial launch and which are actually Zen+ based.
I found a nice walkthrough of Ryzen products at this page: https://specby.com/ryzen-explained-r3-r5-r7-threadripper-epy...
And the CPU and GPU roadmap is worth a look as well: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-ryzen-radeon-roa...
Ryzen 4000 APUs were just announced and also use Zen 2 cores in a monolithic design. These have model numbers that end in G.
Zen 3 based desktop parts are expected late this year. If they follow past naming, they will also be Ryzen 4000 with model numbers sporting an optional X at the end, or no letter suffix.