China displaces US with world’s most powerful supercomputing system

China has displaced the US, crowning itself with the world's strongest computing system.

LineShine is the new number one and the world's most powerful supercomputer, according to new rankings announced at the 67th edition of the TOP500 in Hamburg, Germany, on Tuesday.

It ended the reign of the US-based El Capitan and is the fifth Exascale system overall, the list showed.

Indicating China's leap in cutting-edge technology, the ranking agency said LineShine is installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, China, and was built by the Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center.

The southeastern city of Shenzhen is widely referred to as the Silicon Valley of China.

LineShine is the first China-based system to lead the TOP500 since Sunway TaihuLight in 2017, while the US' El Capitan, based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, has topped the rankings since November 2024.

"LineShine's debut increases the number of systems … from four to five and, for the first time, places exascale systems across Asia, North America, and Europe simultaneously," said the agency.

The US-based Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Aurora at the Argonne National Laboratory in Downers Grove Township ranked third and fourth, respectively, while Jupiter at the Julich Supercomputing Centre in Julich, Germany, ranked fifth.