Some new words recently slipped out around the upcoming Lunar Lake chips from chip maker Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), and it’s going to be a very big launch for Intel. However, it’s not sitting well with investors, who sent shares down modestly in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
The latest word suggests that there could be more versions of the Lunar Lake chip than previously expected, with the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V being the “flagship” version for the series. It’s also set to offer a range of new features.
The Lunar Lake chips series is said to come with an NPU unit that will offer as many as 48 trillion operations per second (TOPS). That will give Intel a route into running Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Copilot+PC system. A new GPU architecture is also said to be on hand, which will make the Battlemage GPUs much more attractive going forward.
Backing AI Infrastructure
Intel has made progress in terms of supporting artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure with the first-ever fully integrated optical input/output (I/O) chipset. The chipset is expected to mean big things for data processing at high speeds, which could mean a big win for Intel. That opens up several potential use cases, including scaling cluster connectivity and bringing in new computing architectures. The chipset can work better with both machine learning and large language models, which are key elements of AI development.
Is Intel a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on three Buys, 26 Holds, and three Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 9.53% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $38.02 per share implies 25% upside potential.
