China has surpassed the US on an influential list ranking the world's fastest supercomputers, showcasing Beijing's ability to compete with the world's leading superpower in advanced technology.
The semi-annual ranking, announced on Tuesday in Hamburg, Germany, placed China's LineShine system ahead of the US-based El Capitan, elevating it to the most powerful system on the planet.
Located at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, LineShine achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops, according to the latest TOP500 list, carrying out more than 2 quintillion calculations per second, giving it a 20% lead over El Capitan.
LineShine's position marks the first time a Chinese system has topped the list since Sunway TaihuLight in 2017. El Capitan, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, had been ranked as the highest-performing system since November 2024.
Jack Dongarra, a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and a co-author of the TOP500 list, said LineShine's performance shows that China can compete in advanced computing despite US export restrictions on the most advanced chips. "Export controls may slow China's access to certain advanced components, but they also provide a strong incentive to develop domestic alternatives," Dongarra said.
Unlike other supercomputers, LineShine operates entirely on general-purpose central processing units (CPUs). This represents a design that has fewer processing cores and is slower on complex tasks compared to graphics processing units (GPUs), which are essential for AI models. LineShine is the first and only system to achieve performance above 2 exaflops using only CPUs.
China and the US have been engaged in a fierce battle for global dominance in frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence over the past decade, imposing mutual sanctions and export controls to hinder each other's progress. Stanford University's 2026 AI Index Report, released in April, revealed that China has "effectively closed the gap" with the US in AI model performance.
Addison Snell, co-founder of computing industry consultancy Intersect360 Research, said LineShine's ranking as the world's top supercomputer should have a ripple effect in the US, Europe and Japan as countries continue to compete for AI supremacy. "The US is still a global leader in technology, but the gap is not wide," Snell added.
