There are some signs that chipmaker Intel (INTC) is starting to make a comeback. News has been good for Intel of late, and the market is starting to respond accordingly. In fact, a wave of fresh news out of Intel has improved things nicely, with investors sending shares up modestly in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
First, Intel is planning another microcode update for its Raptor Lake CPU lineup. The line has been known to fail previously, and a recent microcode update sought to address at least some of the issues. The latest update, known as 0x12B, will help prevent one of the biggest potential causes of damage: getting a lot more power than it needs.
The new update is designed to limit power consumption when a processor is at idle or is doing otherwise light tasks. Previously, it was possible for the processor to call for a lot more power than it needed, effectively setting loose a Ferrari on the equivalent of a skateboard ramp. While it may take “several weeks” for motherboard manufacturers to release the update accordingly, putting in the updates as soon as possible will likely prevent a lot of damage.
Improving the Current Line
Meanwhile, Intel is also hard at work on new projects. Intel is working on customizing its Xeon 6 chips, which we heard about yesterday, into projects that would use Nvidia (NVDA) graphics processing units. That will help give Intel a piece of Nvidia’s action, and with Nvidia the current leader in the artificial intelligence infrastructure space, that should represent a real boost that Intel certainly needs now.
Finally, a new report from EE Times suggests that any notion of an Intel buyout is likely not going to happen. We have heard several such reports of late, but EE Times reports suggest that Intel will more likely sell off divisions and units rather that go for a complete acquisition. Given that reports have emerged that there is no plan to sell either Altera or Mobileye (MBLY), it becomes easy to wonder just what Intel will actually do.
Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on INTC stock based on 15 Buys, four Holds and two Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 29.88% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $210.79 per share implies 35.7% upside potential.
