Even as news about abandoned features and potential vulnerabilities emerged about Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) chips, investors took the news in stride, at least somewhat. In fact, they sent shares up fractionally in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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First came word that the next generation of Intel central processing units (CPUs) will emerge without a feature that had been formerly regarded as key. Specifically, the Arrow Lake processors—along with the 800-series chipsets—won’t support DDR4 memory any longer. Now, they’ll default to DDR5 memory support only.
More specifically, the new processors will use dual-channel DDR5 memory instead, a development that’s hardly unexpected given how things were progressing. Still, removing the option for DDR4 might cost Intel a few sales in the long run. It helps keep upgrades cheaper, and with the economy as it is these days, offering budget-friendly options tends to be rewarded.
But New Attacks Loom
News like this doesn’t tend to come alone. In fact, reports also emerged about the Indirector side-channel attack and its impact on Intel processors. They noted that the new processors—both Raptor Lake and Alder Lake—could be hit by the Indirector attack, which is a kind of “high-precision Branch Target Injection attack,” according to BleepingComputer.
The Indirector attack takes advantage of flaws found in both Branch Target Buffer (BTB) and Indirect Branch Predictor (IBP) operations, which could leave the processors vulnerable to information theft. There’s no solution available to protect against this yet, but some new solutions have been proposed and require testing accordingly.
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 6.79% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $38.02 per share implies 22.35% upside potential.
