China Ousts America as Home to the Planet's Speediest Supercomputer

n n

A Chinese machine has seized the title of world’s most powerful supercomputer, ending nearly a decade of US dominance and underscoring Beijing’s drive to build advanced computing power with homegrown technology.

n

The system, called LineShine, topped the closely watched TOP500 ranking unveiled Monday at the major computing ISC conference in Hamburg, Germany.

n

It is the first time since 2017 that a Chinese supercomputer has led the list, which has been published twice a year since 1993 and serves as an informal scoreboard for the world’s computing superpowers.

n

LineShine knocked the previous champion, the US Energy Department’s El Capitan, into second place.

n

Located in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, the machine hit a sustained speed of 2.2 “exaflops” — a measure of how many calculations a computer can perform each second.

n

Crucially, LineShine was built entirely with Chinese-designed processors, rather than the US-made chips that power most of the world’s top systems.

n

The United States still claims three of the top four spots, with El Capitan, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, coming in at second place.

n

Out of Europe, Germany’s JUPITER Booster rounds out the top five.

n

AFP

n n