

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.
About the time they got rid of the hard plastic cashew jars and switched to the bags, they also started selling a (more expensive) glass jar of cashews.
So for me, it does cut down on the plastic, since now I just refill the glass jar with the bagged cashews, rather than needing to buy (and dispose of) the plastic jar every time.
I might feel differently if I was actually reusing the plastic jars for something but I really wasn’t (not after the first few, anyway).