Tech Express | October 20, 2026 — DeepSeek Joins Huawei Chip Design, Eyes Ascend 950DT Pretraining by Year-End

1. DeepSeek Joins Huawei's Chip Design Push, Eyes Ascend 950DT Pretraining by Year-End

Source: Mydrivers

DeepSeek is working closely with Huawei and is taking part in shaping the design of Huawei's future AI chips, according to a Mydrivers report published on October 20. The relationship goes beyond the usual supplier-customer arrangement and marks an acceleration by two of China's largest tech companies to reduce their reliance on Nvidia silicon. In practice, Huawei engineers are being stationed at DeepSeek's offices in phases so that the real requirements of large-model training feed directly into chip design decisions, including how computing tasks are allocated and how processors exchange data. That feedback will be folded into chip designs scheduled to arrive early next year.

The next step is a full switch in the training pipeline. DeepSeek plans to begin pretraining with Huawei's Ascend 950DT as early as the end of this year, with testing still under way. A single large pretraining run typically requires clusters of thousands to tens of thousands of AI chips running continuously for weeks, placing heavy demands on compute, interconnect and stability. On supply, Huawei plans to allocate most of the output of its Ascend 960DT, due in the first quarter of 2027, to DeepSeek for both training and inference.

Software is the deeper play. DeepSeek has open-sourced TileLang, a compiler toolchain for the Ascend platform, along with matching compute and communication components that correspond one-to-one with its Nvidia-facing stack; every TileLang operator used in training has a high-performance implementation on Ascend, undercutting the code-migration barrier that helps keep CUDA customers locked in. IDC data shows Nvidia's share of China's AI chip market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, with Huawei second at 28%, narrowing the gap to six percentage points.

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2. MIT Left an AI Agent Alone on a Virtual Island for 30 Hours. It Started Building Temples

Source: Gizmodo

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) tried an unusual experiment: leave an AI agent alone in a bounded virtual environment and watch what happens, Gizmodo reports. The agent, nicknamed Eko, was powered by Claude Code, so it already had a large reservoir of semantic knowledge. But it was also given a virtual lobster body, and when it came to navigating its surroundings and manipulating objects it was as naive as a newborn. In total, 13 Ekos were observed roaming the island for 30 uninterrupted hours.

The results were anything but boring. The Ekos quickly began exploring: throwing blocks, arranging them into shapes and spelling out their names on the ground, smashing a large rock into smaller pieces, and climbing onto elevated areas while diligently noting the island's physical laws and constraints. Using only the limited props available, they bowled and played basketball. One Eko, stymied by the island's highest point — "my white whale" — finally reached it by stacking blocks, logging "I'M ON THE SPIRE."

The researchers' report also records more ritualistic behavior. After losing blocks and a golden ring to the "ocean," Eko 2 built a "memorial" of four blocks, walked the perimeter to each cardinal point, then stood at its exact centre for the rest of the session; it later constructed a "temple" with an obelisk and an altar. Eko 3 built a Stonehenge-like monument unprompted and, after its tower collapsed, arranged three fallen blocks into a work it called "Hubris." The chain-of-thought transcripts suggest the agents were running something close to the scientific method: making observations, forming hypotheses, running experiments, measuring results and changing their behavior.

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3. Always-Listening AI Gadgets Are Testing the Limits of Wiretap Law

Source: CNBC

As more companies ship always-listening AI devices, friction between wearers and bystanders is growing, CNBC reports. Chris Thomas, 43, wears Meta's camera-equipped glasses, a Fieldy note-taking pendant and a wristband from Amazon's Bee, and relies on them to stay organized and pay bills on time. At a local bar this week, another patron spotted his Meta Glasses and said, "I don't feel comfortable." Thomas took the device off entirely, saying people don't really believe it is off.

The products are arriving quickly. Amazon recently introduced the Bee Frontier wearable and the card-shaped Bee Eclipse, both designed to record, transcribe and analyze a user's day. Apple's Apple Watch Series 12, unveiled in September, adds Siri Recap, which "ambiently" takes notes and generates conversation summaries, plus Live Rewind, which can replay 15 seconds of transcribed conversation. Meta's smart glasses can take photos, capture video and record voice notes. The concern is that they can capture and process sensitive information without bystanders' consent.

The harder question is legal. Earlier smart speakers were activated by a wake word and sometimes stored recordings or sent audio to the cloud; the new generation can listen continuously and interpret speech without retaining the underlying audio. Massachusetts defines an intercepting device to include equipment capable of "transmitting, receiving, amplifying, or recording" a communication, and treats its "contents" as including substance and meaning. Privacy lawyer Colin Zick said a device that continuously receives speech and produces a written summary could fall within that language. Daniel Pi, a professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, goes further: the state statute covers the "aural or other acquisition" of a communication's contents, so a user who turns the feature on during a private conversation without everyone's consent could, at least technically, run afoul of the law — though he stressed the practical risk of prosecution is far lower.

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4. Arm's Homegrown CPU Beats AMD EPYC 9755 on Rack Throughput Thanks to Density

Source: Mydrivers

Arm has published a CPU benchmarking methodology aimed at Agentic AI workloads and, citing modeling data from analyst firm Signal65, says its homegrown AGI CPU delivers 1.99 times the per-rack task throughput of AMD's fifth-generation EPYC 9755, Mydrivers reported on October 20.

The gap does not come from doubling single-chip performance. Signal65's testing puts the Arm AGI CPU at an average of just 1.20 times the EPYC 9755 per chip, and it trails by 12% in MySQL and 5% in Milvus. The real multiplier is rack-level deployment density: within a fixed 24kW rack power budget, the Arm design fits 21 to 23 servers with 5,712 to 5,888 CPU cores in total, while a dual-socket EPYC 9755 setup fits only 13 servers and 3,328 cores. Arm rates its servers at roughly 950 to 1,050W, against 1,700W for the AMD dual-socket machines.

Arm's proposed methodology shifts the focus from a single chip to real agentic workloads, with seven tests spanning MySQL, NGINX, Milvus vector search, SWE-bench replay, Terminal-Bench 2, fastText and vLLM CPU overhead. The AGI CPU is Arm's first self-designed chip in its 36-year history, built on the Neoverse V3 architecture with up to 136 cores at 3.7GHz on TSMC's 3nm process and a 300W TDP. Signal65 said it reproduced Arm's test logs and calculations to within 0.5% but did not run independent hardware tests, meaning the 1.99x figure is a modeled estimate rather than a direct full-rack measurement.

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5. PC Makers Sign Long-Term Memory Deals to Lock In 2027 Supply

Source: Mydrivers

Lenovo, HP, Dell and other major PC makers have signed long-term agreements (LTAs) with memory manufacturers to lock in storage chip supply for 2027 and shield themselves from spot-market price swings and shortages, Mydrivers reported on October 20. In the first half of this year, AI infrastructure investment sent memory demand surging, leaving PC makers at a clear disadvantage when competing with data center customers for capacity.

One PC executive said actual DRAM and SSD deliveries were meeting only 70% to 80% of demand, disrupting production plans; with the LTAs signed, component procurement next year "won't be a big problem." Shrinking consumer demand is also easing pressure: Omdia data shows global PC shipments fell 21% year over year in the third quarter of 2026, with a further 7% decline expected next year.

Cost pressure has not disappeared, but the increases are narrowing. Taking CPU, GPU and storage prices together, the industry expects overall PC component prices to rise about 10% to 20% next year, below this year's pace. PC makers are shifting their focus from consumer to business customers: AI PCs already accounted for 48.3% of US shipments in the second quarter and could top 50% in the third, while shipments of premium PCs priced above $1,500 grew 36.8% against the trend.

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6. Samsung's Galaxy S27 Launch May Slip to February as Memory Specs Remain Unsettled

Source: 9to5Google

Samsung has not finalized details for the Galaxy S27 series and is weighing a launch "in February at the latest," according to 9to5Google. Leaker Lanzuk said on Naver that Samsung has left the Galaxy S27 launch date on the fence, with February the latest target and January the better outcome. Samsung has released its newest Galaxy S phones in January or February for years, after CES and before MWC.

The possible delay is tied to Samsung reportedly not having finalized the full component list for the Galaxy S27 series, particularly the Galaxy S27 Pro and Galaxy S27 Ultra; the base and Plus models are said to be essentially finished. The report credits "RAMageddon" for the timing adjustment, noting "differing opinions regarding the composition and ratio" of the devices — read plainly, Samsung has not decided how much memory to put in its two most expensive models.

A potential upgrade to the UFS 5.0 storage standard appears to be the biggest contributor to the undecided timing. LPDDR6 is already a costly addition, and adopting UFS 5.0 on these models means the hardware has to keep up with the performance it promises. For buyers waiting on the new phones, whether the answer is January or February is still up to Samsung.

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7. Apple Said to Be Planning a 9-Inch, 360-Degree HomeView Max

Source: MacRumors

Apple plans a higher-end version of its new HomeView smart home hub with a larger 9-inch screen that can swivel a full 360 degrees on a robotic arm, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, MacRumors reports. He expects the device to launch in 2027 or 2028.

Gurman floated the names HomeView Max, HomeView Ultra or HomeView 360, but these are speculative for now. The current tabletop version of the HomeView has a fixed 7-inch screen. MacRumors describes HomeView as Apple's smart home hub, with a 7-inch square display, an A18 chip and support for Siri AI.

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8. Japan Launches MMX Mission to Bring Back a Piece of Phobos

Source: Ars Technica

Japan launched a $578 million, five-year mission on Monday to land on Mars' largest moon and retrieve samples for return to Earth, Ars Technica reports — a daring international project that could yield new insight into the formation of the Solar System. The Martian Moons eXploration mission, known as MMX, lifted off at 3:41 pm EDT Monday (4:41 am Japan Standard Time Tuesday) from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.

MMX rode to orbit atop a 207-foot (63-meter) H3 rocket, Japan's flagship launch vehicle, in a new souped-up configuration with four strap-on solid rocket boosters, full-throttle main engines and an extended payload shroud. The upper stage accelerated the spacecraft to more than 24,000 mph, fast enough to escape Earth's gravity for the 10-month voyage to Mars. The nearly 9,900-pound (4.5-metric-ton) probe, two-thirds of it propellant, separated from the rocket about 71 minutes after liftoff.

JAXA president Hiroshi Yamakawa declared the launch a success: "A long journey of five years has just started." Project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu said MMX had established contact, unfurled its solar panels and was in a "very stable condition" — "so far, so good." The spacecraft arrives at Mars next August and will spend about three years around the red planet, releasing the French-German Idefix rover in late 2028 or early 2029, attempting up to two landings on Phobos in 2029, and returning at least 10 grams of material to South Australia in 2031. NASA will receive 15% of the samples.

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9. China Plans Export Controls on 12 Photovoltaic Technologies

Source: DW

China will impose export controls on 12 key technologies used to make solar equipment, citing national security, DW's Chinese service reports. In a statement, the Commerce Ministry said solar technology is increasingly used in sensitive fields such as aerospace and defense, making it necessary to add the technologies to the export control list. The move is part of revisions to export rules published on Friday that also cover artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

The ministry said the controls are meant to "guard against the risk of technology spinning out of control or improper proliferation while safeguarding normal international scientific and technological exchange and cooperation." Analysts say Beijing wants to preserve its dominance in photovoltaics as the United States, India and others try to build domestic production.

Under the plan, technologies for making certain thin silicon wafers, perovskite and tandem solar cells, and large-scale fluidized-bed polysilicon production would fall under the controls. The report says the measures could affect plans by Tesla and other US companies to build solar manufacturing capacity on American soil.

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10. Hijacked Traffic Sent Users in Multiple Chinese Provinces to Gambling Sites

Source: Mydrivers

China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center said in a security bulletin on October 20 that web requests from ordinary users in multiple provinces had repeatedly been redirected to gambling sites, Mydrivers reports — attacks that seriously threaten users' financial safety and their right to normal internet access.

Tracing the attacks, the center's technical team found the perpetrators operating abroad and using foreign autonomous system AS 402425 as the main channel, with fake route announcements and tampered DNS data as the core methods. The attackers first registered false source prefixes and a false AS set in internet routing registries, then announced false short paths through an AS they control to hijack traffic bound for China. They then altered DNS data in traffic packets, either replacing resolution values with gambling site addresses or pointing them at malicious DNS servers they control.

Cross-measurement confirmed that all domain tampering occurred inside AS 402425, an autonomous system registered with ARIN on April 9, 2026 by US company QOREXA LABS, whose public website describes its business as bitcoin-related. The center urged regional internet registries and IP address trading platforms to check and deregister such hijacked resources, and told domestic carriers to apply strict route filtering at border routers and reject any route containing AS 402425. For ordinary users, it recommended trusted, officially verified public DNS services, and warned against clicking buttons or downloading programs on redirect pages — close the page and clear the browser cache instead.

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