While chip stock Intel (INTC) took a beating today as part of a broader pullback in chips, there was one good point to emerge for it. Intel is bringing back AVX-512 support to the Nova Lake central processing unit (CPU) lineup. This was good news, at least for some. But investors had their minds elsewhere, and Intel shares lost over 9% in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
AVX-512 support was not always on the table at Intel. The Alder Lake lineup saw the support pulled as the existing E-cores did not support the tool. And for a while, most Intel processors did without AVX-512 support, until just recently. A new patch for Linux revealed that AVX-512 is making a return, and will be found not only on the E-cores that could not support it previously, but also on P-cores.
Intel has been working to roll out a unified AVX solution, reports note, and it originally focused on SIMD extensions instead. Yet Intel did still work on things in the background, trying to get past the AVX10 issues first. Intel has been working on that for years, and recently showed off AVX10.2 to allow 512-bit instructions to run. Further development followed, and now, AVX-512 is within sight. We may never see the new AVX10 hit client processors, but having a Linux patch suggests that things could go farther than this before too much longer.
Goldman Digs Intel, Later
Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider—who has a five-star rating on TipRanks—recently rolled out some perspective that attempted to answer one big question for investors: is Intel a better buy than AMD (AMD)? Intel has been on a spectacular comeback trail for several months, while AMD is stepping up its lead in AI infrastructure.
Yet Schneider—who has a Neutral rating on Intel stock and a price target of $150 per share—believes that Intel has “…meaningful long-term catalysts.” Intel also has several new production deals that are either in the works or set to begin in the short-term. Ultimately, though, Intel’s current operations are somewhat less compelling than their equivalent elsewhere. Intel is thus left in the position where its long-term opportunities are compelling, but this still works out to birds in the bush against the birds in hand that other companies like AMD have.
Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on 12 Buys, 25 Holds and two Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 418.02% rally in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $101.09 per share implies 7.58% downside risk.
