They are still pick-up trucks though and they are delineated by their model year in that industry which is why the brand name has never been required to provide any further delineation.
If you tell me you have a Ford F-150 I know you are communicating to me that you have a pickup truck, not a 4-door sedan and not a mini-van, regardless the year it was sold. The basic architecture of the vehicle is the same.
If I want further information I might ask you "what year is it?", and with that info I would understand that a 1990 F-150 is not going to have the same feature-set of a 2010 F-150...but they'd both be pickup trucks, the 2010 F-150 isn't a Hummer or an airplane or a boat (i.e a mode of transport).
And just to bring this back to my originating point, it is Intel (not us enthusiasts) that claims Sandy Bridge is a new architecture (a tock).
If instead they said it was westmere+, a mere tick-equivalent iteration of the architecture as westmere was to nehalem, then the entire purpose of my dialogue here would be irrelevant.
How silly would it be if AMD gives Bulldozer the brand name "Phenom II 2"?
To me it is just as silly to brand Sandy Bridge SKU's as "Core i7 2".
Just my opinion.
and these are still processors and if i really cared i'd ask what you've got. i'd then need a spec sheet to decode what that means if you told me the model. the way intel goes about their naming it'd be like me telling you what my F-150's equipment is by telling you the order code number. but no dealer advertises that way, they say F-150 V8, 4x4, tow package. but all computer makers give you the model number as if that means anything.
to continue the car analogies, nehalem is an engine with the same block and pistons as c2, but with higher flowing intake, better exhaust, and a more aggressive cam. sandybridge really sounds like the same thing but with a better transmission or maybe a blower. and cruddy integrated graphics (maybe like the chevy silverado 'hybrid'). i don't think they're changing the execution core itself that much (though i could be wrong).
all nehalem and derivatives should have been core3, with sandybridge being core4. i hardly know what i3, i5, and i7 are supposed to mean, and i sorta pay attention to this stuff.
intel's advertising has picked up on this as they refer to the 'intel 2010 core processors.' too bad they didn't hire the same people to pick the model names.
as for amd i would continue using the athlon and phenom names to indicate a difference between the consumeriffic and higher end parts. brand names are expensive to develop (which is why pentium is still with us)