China takes US crown on ranking of world’s fastest supercomputers

China’s LineShine overtakes US-based El Capitan as most powerful supercomputer, according to the TOP500 list.China has displaced the United States on an influential ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers, underscoring Beijing’s growing capability to compete with the world’s leading superpower in cutting-edge technology.China’s LineShine is the most powerful system on the planet, overtaking the US-based El Capitan, according to the biannual ranking announced in Hamburg, Germany, on Tuesday.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4US Supreme Court says Rastafarian man shaved by prison guards can’t suelist 2 of 4Protesters sentenced to decades in US prison over alleged antifa tieslist 3 of 4‘I’m back’: Ronaldo breaks records, joins World Cup party in Portugal’s winlist 4 of 4UN begins evacuation of 11,000 sailors stranded in Strait of Hormuzend of listLineShine, located at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops, carrying out more than 2 quintillion calculations per second – a 20 percent lead over El Capitan, according to the latest TOP500 list.LineShine’s position marks the first time a Chinese system has topped the list since Sunway TaihuLight did so in 2017.El Capitan, based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, had ranked as the top-performing system since November 2024.Frontier at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, ranked third, followed by Aurora at the Argonne National Laboratory in Downers Grove Township, Illinois, and Jupiter at the Julich Supercomputing Centre in Julich, Germany.Other countries represented in the top 20 included the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.Jack Dongarra, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee who is one of the organisers of the TOP500 list, said LineShine’s performance showed China to be capable of holding its own in advanced computing despite US export restrictions on the most advanced chips.