For those who came in late, the chipmaker was plagued with supply issues throughout 2019 and some suppliers had actually been offering AMD products because they could be certain of getting the chips.

Swain told analysts that Intel had got a handle on the problem and would deliver on its full-year outlook and to begin to build the inventory levels to a more natural position so that the mix dynamics of what product it sells and when it can manage the volatility is that much better than it has been able to in the fourth quarter.

"So supply constraints, we are maniacal about eliminating those so that we can meet customer demand and never have to worry about it", he said.

"Our expectations in 2020 is it will have high single-digit PC unit volume and against a market that we expect to be flat to down slightly. So we are going to be in good position and meet the market demand in 2020", said Swan.

He said that the cause of the shortages was strong demand from customers for Intel gear.

"We invested record levels of CapEx in 2018 and 2019. That added capacity allowed us to increase our second half 2019 PC CPU supply by double digits relative to the first half. However, demand has continued to outpace PC supply and supply remains tight in our PC business", he said.

He said that it was continuing to add capacity: "Across our 14 and 10-nanometer nodes, we are adding 25% wafer capacity this year to deliver a high single digit increase in PC unit volume."