Groundbreaking as the "Ivy Bridge" chips may be, their codename isn't, according to the man who came up with the internal moniker for Intel's next Core processor family. Ivy Bridge is the codename for Intel's third-generation Core processors.

Internal Intel codenames derive from existing geographic places in North America. A rare exception is "Sandy Bridge," the codename for Intel's second-generation Core processor. In Intel's so-called "tick-tock" model, "Ivy Bridge" is a "tick," an advance in manufacturing process technology, to the 'tock" that was the new "Sandy Bridge" microarchitecture.