Lead
China has reclaimed the title of the world’s fastest supercomputer for the first time since 2017, according to the latest TOP500 rankings released at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany, on Tuesday. The LineShine system, built by the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, achieved a sustained performance of 2.198 exaflops — more than 2 quintillion calculations per second — surpassing the previous champion, El Capitan, at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which reached 1.809 exaflops. LineShine is also the first supercomputer to exceed two exaflops using only central processing units (CPUs), without relying on the graphics processing units (GPUs) that power most of today’s leading systems.
Coverage
The TOP500 list, published twice a year since 1993, serves as an informal scoreboard for the world’s computing superpowers. LineShine’s debut at the top marks the first time a Chinese system has led the list since Sunway TaihuLight did so in 2017. The machine was built entirely with Chinese-designed processors, a notable departure from the US-made chips that dominate most top-tier systems. According to the rankings, the US still claims three of the top four spots, with El Capitan dropping to second, followed by Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee (third) and Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois (fourth). Germany’s JUPITER Booster rounds out the top five.
LineShine’s architecture is a key differentiator. While most exascale systems, including El Capitan, depend heavily on GPUs — which excel at handling many calculations simultaneously and are indispensable for running AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude — LineShine runs entirely on general-purpose CPUs, which typically have fewer cores and are slower at complex tasks. Despite this, it achieved the highest performance ever recorded on the TOP500 list.
Experts cited in the reports noted the significance of the achievement. TOP500 co-founder and Turing Award winner Jack Dongarra told the South China Morning Post: “This is the first time a computer with only CPUs has reached exascale.” He also commented on the implications of US export controls: “China can adapt to develop its own version of technology as good as – or maybe even better than – existing technology, despite US export controls.”
The broader context includes a competitive landscape in high-performance computing. The EU last year revealed a €20bn plan to build sites equipped with vast supercomputers to develop next-generation technology. The UK has 11 machines in the list of 500, with the University of Bristol’s Isambard-AI — fitted with 5,400 Nvidia “superchips” — ranked highest at 11th, down two places since the last ranking. Western Australia’s Setonix, ranked 86th, is the best performing of four machines located in Australia.
Perspectives
China's technological advancement: Reports highlight LineShine's achievement as a milestone for China's homegrown computing capabilities, noting that the machine was built entirely with Chinese-designed processors and achieved the top spot despite US export controls aimed at curbing China's advances in AI and supercomputing.
US and global context: While acknowledging China's achievement, reports also note that the US retains three of the top four positions and that the top five systems are the only publicly verified exascale computers in the world. The reports also mention the EU's €20bn investment plan and the UK's presence in the list, framing the competition as part of a broader global race for technological supremacy.