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A view inside China’s National Supercomputing Center.(Image credit: The National Supercomputing Center)
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A Chinese system has emerged as the world’s foremost supercomputer, overtaking American systems for the first time since 2021.
LineShine, situated at China’s National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, has secured the premier position in the 67th TOP500 compilation of the globe’s most potent supercomputers. This new installation has already found application across various domains, providing developers with an additional pathway to achieve high-performance computing capabilities.
The computational facility, which commenced operations in the initial half of 2026, is capable of achieving speeds of 2.198 exaFLOPS — where one exaFLOP represents one quintillion (10^18) floating-point operations, or mathematical computations, per second (FLOPS) — establishing it as the sole supercomputer globally to surpass the 2 exaFLOPS per second threshold. This also marks the first occasion since 2017 that China has hosted the planet’s swiftest supercomputer.
A FLOP serves as a metric for gauging computational prowess. Exascale supercomputers possess the ability to execute over a quintillion such operations every second. For comparative context, typical home computers can process approximately 5 trillion FLOPS.
According to TOP500, LineShine demonstrates performance approximately 22% faster than El Capitan, a supercomputer located at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, which had previously held the leading position since November 2024.
The computational capacity of this system is attributed to “a comprehensive advancement in a series of fundamental technological hurdles,” as stated in a translated declaration from China’s National Supercomputing Center.
In contrast to numerous other supercomputers, LineShine exclusively employs central processing units (CPUs) for its computational tasks. Alternative systems often utilize a combination of CPUs and graphics processing units (GPUs), which handle multiple operations concurrently by distributing workloads among numerous smaller, specialized cores.
Since 2018, the U.S. government has imposed restrictions on the export of semiconductor chips to China, including GPUs. Nevertheless, emerging companies such as DeepSeek have achieved other technological breakthroughs, enabling the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models with fewer and less potent GPUs compared to similar systems like ChatGPT.
LineShine “signifies a momentous stride for China’s supercomputing sector, overcoming external technological impediments and establishing an autonomous and manageable software and hardware infrastructure,” the statement elaborated.
This system has already been instrumental in projects spanning multiple research domains, including atmospheric science, pharmaceutical development, and AI, as reported by the National Supercomputing Center. Generally, supercomputers undertake exceptionally intricate calculations at speeds far exceeding those of conventional computers, thereby enabling them to resolve issues that would otherwise require prohibitive time or expense.
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The leading supercomputers employ a diverse array of architectures and processors, demonstrating that high-performance computing is not confined to any single methodology.
“The roster illustrates that there isn’t a singular dominant technological avenue to achieving leadership-class computing; instead, manufacturers are exploring a multiplicity of CPU, GPU, APU, and custom-accelerator approaches, complemented by various interconnect and system configurations,” stated TOP500 representatives.
Following LineShine and El Capitan, two supercomputers housed at U.S. national laboratories and one situated in Germany occupied the third to fifth positions on the TOP500 list. Systems in Italy, Switzerland, Japan, and the U.S. complete the top 10.
Can you match these ancient devices to their pictures? Find out with our computing quiz!
Sourse: www.livescience.com
