A newly unveiled supercomputer in China has overtaken its American rivals to become the world’s most powerful computing system, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese machine has claimed the top spot in the global Top500 rankings, a benchmark often regarded as a measure of national technological strength.
Known as LineShine and located in Shenzhen, the system surpassed the previously top-ranked US supercomputer, El Capitan, in the latest rankings released on Tuesday.
The achievement marks LineShine’s first appearance on the prestigious list.
Unlike many modern high-performance computing systems that rely heavily on graphics processing units for artificial intelligence tasks, LineShine operates entirely using conventional central processing units.
According to the rankings, the machine consumes about 42.2 megawatts of electricity.
Supercomputers are capable of processing data at speeds more than 1,000 times faster than standard computers and are used for a wide range of advanced applications, including medical research, climate modelling, nuclear simulation, behavioural prediction, and virtual weapons testing.
Scientists behind the Top500 rankings reported that LineShine, housed at China’s National Supercomputing Center, achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops, enabling it to carry out more than two quintillion calculations per second.
The US-based El Capitan supercomputer, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, now occupies second place, followed by two other American systems operating at national laboratories in Tennessee and Illinois.
Germany’s Jupiter supercomputer slipped to fifth position. Together, these five systems are currently the only publicly verified exascale supercomputers in operation worldwide.
The top 10 rankings also feature machines from Italy, Switzerland and Japan, highlighting the global competition in advanced computing.
The United Kingdom has 11 systems on the Top500 list. The highest-ranked among them is Isambard-AI at the University of Bristol, which now sits in 11th place after dropping two spots from the previous ranking.
Powered by 5,400 Nvidia “superchips,” the system is housed within a secured black metal enclosure topped with razor wire.
