Intel CEO Bob Swan (Intel Photo)

Just a week ago, interim Intel CEO Bob Swan promised that the company’s board of directors would name a permanent CEO in the “near future.” On Thursday, he officially got the job.

Swan becomes the seventh CEO in Intel’s 50-year history after serving as chief financial officer for more than two years. He was named interim CEO in the wake of former CEO Brian Krzanich’s sudden resignation last June after acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with an employee, and takes over at a pivotal time in the history of the storied chip maker.

“’m honored to have the chance to continue working alongside our board, our leadership team, and our more than 107,000 superb employees as we take the company forward,” Swan said in a statement. Intel reportedly cast a wide net in its search for a “permanent” CEO, considering external candidates despite a longtime history of grooming and promoting internal candidates before finally settling on Swan.

Intel still dominates the market for PC and server processors, but the last year has been a challenging one. Manufacturing issues have caused chip shortages in the PC business that Microsoft pointed to Wednesday as a drag on the PC business, and it is facing renewed data center competition from longtime rival AMD as well as a new Arm-based custom server processor designed by cloud giant Amazon Web Services.

Last week Swan projected the company’s revenue would be flat in 2019, a take that investors did not particularly care for. His main task will be to sort out Intel’s manufacturing issues while reassuring cloud customers that its server processor roadmap remains strong.

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