Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is at a very sensitive place right now as technically, it is at a make or break point and the price action here will have an impact, not only in the short term but the intermediate timeframe too. The band of $28-$30 resisted any attempt to rally very strongly with a huge supply pressure nipping any bullish bud but that was firmly overcome in 2014. A very fast rally to $38 followed the breakout but now the entire bullish speculation may be at risk. This is the second retest of the resistance turned support area in the last 6 months and the bulls must protect this area at any cost. Either the price begins rally for a new 52 week high immediately or any extended correction can really weaken the long term uptrend.

Do analyst foresee a momentum shift in INTC?

The rumor of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) planning to buy rival chip maker Altera Corporation (NASDAQ:ALTR) is being taken in a positive way as that step may offer the company further room for growth. On the other hand NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) looks like a great candidate to many people too, especially as INTC wants to buy growth and the growth potential coupled with a great balance sheet makes it very attractive. If the PC business really continues to pick up, then any of these acquisitions can add real value to INTC.

The upcoming Knights Landing chip is being talked about for a long time now and that may affect the investors’ interest in a big way. It is supposed to be the next generation of chips delivering very high performance in workloads. If it really delivers double precision floating point performance in excess of 3 teraflops and single precision floating point performance of 6 teraflops, then Intel can be expected to capture a major chunk of the very important high performance computing market.