Chinese supercomputer regains title of world's fastest, surpassing US machines
China's LineShine supercomputer has topped the latest Top500 rankings, becoming the world's most powerful and marking the first time since 2017 a Chinese machine has held the top spot.
A supercomputer in China has reclaimed the title of the world's fastest, according to the latest Top500 rankings released on Tuesday. The LineShine machine, located at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, displaced the US-built El Capitan, which had held the top position. This is the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has reached the top of the list, often seen as a gauge of national technological prowess.
What sets LineShine apart from other high-performance computers is that it relies entirely on conventional central processing units (CPUs) rather than the graphics processing units (GPUs) commonly used for artificial intelligence. The supercomputer requires approximately 42.2 megawatts of electricity to operate, according to the list.
LineShine achieves 2.198 exaflops, meaning it can perform more than 2 quintillion calculations per second. It now leads the ranking, followed by El Capitan at the US government's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Two other US supercomputers, located at national laboratories in Tennessee and Illinois, hold the third and fourth spots.
Germany's Jupiter supercomputer dropped to fifth place. These five machines are the only publicly verified exascale computers in the world. Other countries with supercomputers in the top 10 include Italy, Switzerland, and Japan.
The United Kingdom has 11 machines on the list. The University of Bristol's Isambard-AI, equipped with 5,400 Nvidia "superchips," is the highest-ranked UK machine at 11th place, down two spots from the previous ranking.
Western Australia's Setonix ranks 86th, making it the top-performing Australian machine among the four listed.
Last year, the European Union unveiled a €20 billion (£17 billion) plan to build facilities equipped with vast supercomputers to develop next-generation AI models, aiming to catch up with leaders in the United States and China. The AI "gigafactories" will target breakthroughs in healthcare, biotechnology, industry, robotics, and scientific discovery. According to an EU strategy document, the best-performing AI factories currently have supercomputers with up to 25,000 advanced AI processors, but a gigafactory would exceed 100,000.
An EU official noted that these power-hungry facilities, which can require large amounts of water for cooling, should run "as much as possible" on green energy, with plans to recycle water whenever used. Campaigners have expressed concern that such energy-intensive data centers could undermine Europe's climate ambitions.
