China ousts US as home of world’s fastest supercomputer

A Chinese supercomputer has overtaken its US rivals to become the world’s most powerful machine, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese system has topped a global ranking often regarded as a barometer of technological strength.

The LineShine supercomputer, located in Shenzhen, China, displaced the US-based El Capitan to claim the top spot in the latest TOP500 rankings released on Tuesday. It was the Chinese system’s first appearance on the list.

According to scientists behind the TOP500 project, LineShine, housed at China’s National Supercomputing Centre, achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops — equivalent to more than two quintillion calculations per second.

El Capitan, based at the US government’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, slipped to second place. It is followed by two other US supercomputers located at national laboratories in Tennessee and Illinois. Germany’s Jupiter supercomputer dropped to fifth.

The five systems are currently the only publicly verified exascale supercomputers in operation worldwide.

Unlike many of today’s leading high-performance computing systems, LineShine relies entirely on conventional central processing units (CPUs) rather than graphics processing units (GPUs), which are widely used in artificial intelligence applications.

The machine consumes approximately 42.2 megawatts of electricity, according to TOP500 data.