Chinese Supercomputer Tops Global Speed Ranking, Overtaking US Machines
The LineShine system in Shenzhen has become the world's fastest, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has held the top spot on the TOP500 list.
A supercomputer in China has surpassed its U.S. counterparts to become the world's most powerful, according to the latest TOP500 ranking. This development marks the first time since 2017 that a Chinese machine has held the top position on the list, which is often seen as an indicator of national technological capability.
The newly ranked number one system, named LineShine, is located at China's National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen. It achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops, signifying its capacity to execute over 2 quintillion calculations per second. This debut on the list saw it displace the U.S. supercomputer El Capitan.
El Capitan, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, now ranks second. Two other U.S. supercomputers, situated at national laboratories in Tennessee and Illinois, occupy the third and fourth positions. Germany's Jupiter supercomputer has fallen to fifth place. These five systems are identified as the only publicly verified exascale computers globally.
LineShine distinguishes itself by operating exclusively with conventional central processing units (CPUs), diverging from the trend of using graphics processing units (GPUs), which are common in high-performance computing, particularly for artificial intelligence tasks. The TOP500 project indicates that LineShine requires approximately 42.2 megawatts of electricity to operate.