Intel's fourth-quarter net income of $3.66 billion easily beat analyst expectations, leading the chipmaker to full-year earnings-per-share growth of 22 percent for 2014. The company's data center and Internet of Things groups posted the biggest growth rate for the quarter ended in December, jumping 25 and 10 percent respectively from the same period in 2013.

"The fourth quarter was a strong finish to a record year," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a statement, vowing to "keep Intel focused on the next wave of computing" in 2015.

Intel's full-year revenue hit $55.9 billion, for earnings of $2.31 per share, compared with $1.89 per share in 2013. Fourth-quarter net income of $3.66 billion, or 74 cents per share, topped average analyst estimates of 66 cents per share.

Though its PC group remains the top revenue earner, Intel's emerging IoT and data center businesses grew rapidly last year as the company continued diversifying into cloud infrastructure.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker stands to profit from the rise of NFV and SDN in the data center, and recently upped its support for the OpenDaylight SDN controller project.

"We are in a great position to benefit from build out of cloud," Krzanich said on a call with investors Thursday.

Intel shares dipped up to 3 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday, as projected first-quarter revenues of $13.7 billion missed the consensus expectation of $13.8 billion.