If you don’t have an Intel CPU, then you shouldn’t need it. At least, I think it’s only for CPUs and not for other intel-based devices (NIC, graphics, whatever).

It’s prompting for upgrade because it’s already installed. It’s recommended (but not required) by initramfs-tools, so that’s probably why it’s installed (recommended packages are installed by default). oops, read that wrong. Intel-microcode recommends initramfs-tools.

You may want to run

apt-rdepends intel-microcode 

to see what pulled it in.

But you should be able to uninstall it, and then it won’t prompt you any more.

This pic made me smile.

I haven’t been to DebConf since before COVID, but I definitely recognize a few people in that pic.