Question Artifact Versioning

There is something I still couldn't get a good grasp of, related to the Artifacts in AssetDatabase.
Official documentation states in this page Asset Database's under the The Artifact database heading:
"Artifacts are the results of the import process. The Artifact database contains information about the import results of each source asset. Each Artifact contains the import dependency information, Artifact meta-information and a list of Artifact files."

In the same page, after navigating alittle bit down, under the Platform Switching and reimporting:
"... the platform is part of the hash that the Asset Database uses to store the import results for Unity’s built-in importers. This means that the results for importing your assets on different platforms are stored as separate pieces of cached data."

So, when I add a new Texture to my project, I can observe the creatin of the artifact via the Import Activity window. With the Show Previous Imports option being on, I can keep track of the whole changes step by step. This Previous Imports section has a column named Artifact ID and looks quite unique like a GUID. There is also another piece of info on the Asset-related section under the Produced Files / Artifacts. The artifact name looks like being generated from the hash itself.

According to my understanding of the official documentation, if I change the name of the asset, the artifact itself should change, a new artifact is produced. And, this happens exactly as expected. Morever, the same result must be observed if I simply switch platforms. However, in this case, the only changing thing is the Artifact ID in the Previous Imports section, not the real artifact file, as stated in the Asset-related section of the window.

I don't know if I have missed something crucial about the whole process, but I can't understand why things happen this way. I'd really apreciate if you tell me the whole logic behind this process.

Pics indicate the change for this order: initial import, platform change and finally name change for the file.

 

No S***! You don't happen to be in Stuttgart, are you?


As for switching platforms, this could be an internal optimization. Switching platforms used to take just as long as deleting the Library folder and re-importing the whole project - and that happened every time the platforms were switched, which was a huge time waste for multi-platform devs.

If I remember correctly this was eventually improved and the fact that the Artifact Id remains the same when switching may be a side-effect of that. I expect there to be another cache of platform-specific artifacts somewhere in the Library.

Why is that important to you?