LineShine machine at Shenzhen tops global rankings and performs more than 2 quintillion calculations per second
A Chinese supercomputer is now the fastest in the world, outpacing the US front-runner.
The LineShine computer at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, China’s “Silicon Valley”, displaced the American computer El Capitan in the Top500 list.
It’s the first time LineShine has been included on the list and the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped the rankings.
Scientists behind the Top500 list, often seen as a measure of a country’s technical advancement, said the LineShine computer achieved 2.198 exaflops, meaning it can carry out more than two quintillion calculations per second.
By contrast, El Capitan, based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, can only achieve 1.809 exaflops – an output 20 per cent inferior to that of LineShine.
Supercomputers, which are more than 1,000 times faster than normal computers, consist of different computer systems working together and are therefore critical for research.
Astronomers can use supercomputers to simulate galaxies, scientists can use them to map the spread of cancer and militaries can use them to mimic nuclear explosions and test new weapons systems virtually.
LineShine differs from many other computers by running on computer chips or central processing units (CPUs) instead of graphic processing units (GPUs).
The LineShine computer does not have any advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips, probably because the materials needed to manufacture the chips are still blocked by US export controls.
It is the first computer on the list capable of exceeding two exaflops “of sustained double-precision performance using CPUs only”, according to the press release from Top500.
Frontier and Aurora, the American supercomputers, were ranked third and fourth respectively, followed by Jupiter, the German rival.
The top five are the only publicly known exascale computers in the world.
Major companies Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet have also built supercomputers, but use them for AI work and do not compete for a spot on the Top500 list.
A study last year found that SpaceX’s xAI’s Colossus system was probably already more powerful than El Capitan.
The new supercomputer is the latest in the ongoing technology race between the US and China.
Especially when it comes to AI, China has been eager to catch up with American companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, which have developed the top models.
The UK also has a supercomputer in the top 20, as do South Korea, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Japan.
The highest-ranking supercomputer in the UK, in 11th place – two places down since the last ranking – is the Isambard-AI at the University of Bristol.
It has 5,400 superchips from Nvidia and was built primarily for AI research. According to the University of Bristol, it has led to breakthroughs in automated drug discovery and climate research.
The Top500 list has been published biannually since 1993, but has become less relevant with the development of AI.
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