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Intel Corp. shares slid with the broader market Thursday as the chip giant introduced several new products to support artificial intelligence and data analytics.
Intel shares declined 1.2% to $59.78 in recent activity, after touching an intraday low of $59.52. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.43% was down 0.2%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.66%, which counts Intel as a component, was off 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.18% was up 0.1% and the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX, -0.66% was down 0.4%.
On Thursday, Intel introduced its third-generation of Xeon, or “Cooper Lake” code-named, Scalable processors that halve the amount of bits needed to format numbers, a feature it calls Bfloat16.
Wells Fargo Securities analyst Aaron Rakers, who has an equal weight rating and a $60 price target, said the most notable highlight of the release was Intel’s Bfloat16 compact numeric format that uses half the amount of information needed to format numbers in computers.
“The addition of bfloat16, which uses half the bits of FP32, but achieves comparable model accuracy, accelerates both AI training and inference performance in the CPU,” Rakers said, adding that investors will likely continue to debate whether AI training and inferencing is better handled on CPUs or on graphics processing units like those made by Nvidia Corp. NVDA, -0.94%
Intel also introduced its Optane persistent memory product that supplies up to 4.5 terabytes of memory per socket for data-intensive applications.
The company also released a new line of 3D NAND solid-state drives, the Intel SSD D7-P5500 and the P5600. NAND chips are the flash memory chips that are usually associated with USB drives and devices such as digital cameras.
Intel said it was planning to release its Stratix 10 AI-optimized NX field programmable gate arrays that can be used for applications like natural language processing and fraud detection. FPGAs are chips that allow customers or designers to customize logic gates within the chips for specialized applications.
The Xeon, Optane and 3D NAND products are available immediately, while the Stratix products is expected in the second half of 2020, Intel said.
Of the 44 analysts who cover Intel, 17 have buy or overweight ratings on the stock, while 22 have hold ratings and five have sell or underweight ratings as of April 9, with an average share-price target of $64.71, according to FactSet data.
For the year, Intel shares are flat, compared with a 7% gain in the SOX index.
