I think it'd be a little clearer to avoid referring to any of the Threadripper family as "below HEDT" or the sort. That's the Ryzen 9 family, even the lowest end plain Threadripper was always HEDT. Nothing here has changed for the consumer market.
I won't comment much on the rumour side but overall I'm not as worried about whether things are named "Threadripper" vs "Threadripper PRO" as this never set the price floor anyways E.g. a 16 core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3950X was $350 MSRP higher than a 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X.
Whether or not they ever release anymore low price high lane count options is an interesting question but that AM5 was supposed answer this and because it didn't AM5 is a departure from the past is just too many layers of assumption, rumour, and leaks to make any useful discussion about.
I think you're still misreading me. The first graf is largely about Ryzen, and their 16 core model is just below HEDT. If anything, that SKU raised the ceiling for mainstream/consumer parts well into the HEDT space except by lane count/expansion options.
Threadripper changed the definition of HEDT, but rumor is that there won't be a Zen 3/4 option for it, and those users will only have Intel as an option. That's the unusual departure.
The disappointing thing is that this chip on paper has the bandwidth - some pro users would likely be happy to get Zen 4 with the option for 0-2 PCIe 4.0x16 slots, and 2-6 PCIe 4.0x8 slots. That's the amount of bandwidth this CPU has.
Again there is no reduction in CPU lanes compared to AM4. There are 16 for the GPU, 4 for storage, 4 for secondary storage or USB 4 external PCIe, and 4 for the chipset to share put as desired. That's 28 total lanes just like AM4.
Chagall/Zen 3 did drop the TRX40 chipset but again the sWRX8 class was only a small uplift from prosumer anyways so I'm not sure the loss of sTR4 is all that interesting or best compared to AM5. The question is whether they decide to continue to release Threadripper Pros at an attractive price point not lamenting why AM5 didn't absorb sTR4.
I won't comment much on the rumour side but overall I'm not as worried about whether things are named "Threadripper" vs "Threadripper PRO" as this never set the price floor anyways E.g. a 16 core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3950X was $350 MSRP higher than a 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X.
Whether or not they ever release anymore low price high lane count options is an interesting question but that AM5 was supposed answer this and because it didn't AM5 is a departure from the past is just too many layers of assumption, rumour, and leaks to make any useful discussion about.