An open letter penned by Intel CEO Bob Swan promises a $1 billion boost to the company’s manufacturing efforts.

That boost is in response to an increased demand for the manufacturer’s 14nm chips, thanks to PC hardware market growth. For the first time in six years, it appears Intel is struggling to keep up supply.

“We continue to believe we will have at least the supply to meet the full-year revenue outlook we announced in July, which was $4.5 billion higher than our January expectations,” said Swan, assuring investors that Intel intends to keep up with demand.

This isn’t just a case of Intel chips being so popular that the company can’t make enough of them, though. With the continued delay on moving to smaller, 10nm chips, Intel has been releasing more processors and chipsets based on 14nm designs - squeezing more products out of the technology, and placing more pressure on manufacturing.

“We’re making progress with 10nm,” said Swan, on the move to the new technology. “Yields are improving and we continue to expect volume production in 2019.”

But reports suggest it may be two years before data centre ready 10nm Intel server chips come to market. Meanwhile, AMD has been gaining ground, with some analysts expecting that company’s 7nm, server-grade Zen2 processors to outperform competing Intel chips by as early as next year.