China’s LineShine supercomputer surpassed the U.S. system El Capitan in the latest TOP500 rankings, marking Beijing’s first return to the No. 1 spot since 2017.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
China has returned to the top of the global supercomputer rankings for the first time since 2017, surpassing the United States in a closely watched measure of advanced computing power.
Researchers announced Tuesday that LineShine, a new system operating at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, is now the world’s fastest supercomputer.
The system displaced El Capitan, the U.S. supercomputer housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which had held the top position since November 2024.
According to benchmark results released in the latest TOP500 rankings, LineShine reached 2.198 exaflops on the High Performance Linpack benchmark. That performance made it more than 20% faster than El Capitan.
The result represents a major milestone for China in its technological competition with the United States and underscores Beijing’s continued progress in advanced computing despite U.S. export controls targeting key technologies used in artificial intelligence and high-performance systems.
LineShine’s design also drew attention because it does not rely on the graphics processing units, or GPUs, commonly used in many of the world’s fastest supercomputers. GPUs have become central to artificial intelligence workloads and advanced computing, and U.S. export restrictions have focused heavily on limiting China’s access to the most powerful versions.
Instead, LineShine uses a CPU-only architecture built around Chinese-developed technology. The system runs on China’s LingKun platform, LingQi interconnect network and Kylin operating system.
Dr. Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist and organizer of the TOP500 rankings, said the system’s architecture made the achievement especially notable.
“It’s an impressive system,” Dongarra told The New York Times. “They upped us by developing a system that is not reliant on GPUs.”
The development comes as Washington and Beijing compete for dominance in artificial intelligence, semiconductors and advanced computing. The United States remains a leader in several areas of frontier AI through companies including OpenAI, Google and Nvidia. China, however, has accelerated its push to build domestic alternatives and reduce reliance on foreign hardware and software.
That effort includes private-sector advances by companies such as DeepSeek, as well as government-backed supercomputing projects intended to strengthen China’s position in strategic technologies.
The Trump administration has maintained tariffs and export controls designed to restrict China’s access to advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing tools. Those policies have targeted GPUs in particular because of their importance in training large AI models and powering high-end computing systems.
LineShine’s rise to the top of the rankings has prompted some experts to question whether current restrictions leave gaps.
“The U.S. government should have stronger controls on the export and manufacturing of CPUs for the China market,” Jimmy Goodrich of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation told the Times. “It is a loophole in the current regulations.”
Experts said the system shows that Chinese researchers can still build world-class supercomputers even under restrictions on certain U.S. technologies.
LineShine also expands the small group of exascale supercomputers operating worldwide. The category includes systems capable of performing more than one quintillion calculations per second.
The latest rankings place LineShine alongside El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora and Europe’s JUPITER Booster as part of the world’s leading class of exascale systems.
For China, the No. 1 ranking is both a scientific achievement and a symbolic victory in the broader race with the United States over advanced computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence capability and technological independence.
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