China has already done this the world’s fastest supercomputer, overtaking the United States. The system called LineShine, installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, displaced the American El Capitan system from the top place in the TOP500 ranking in terms of computing power.
The breakthrough came at a time of intense competition between Beijing and Washington for technological dominance, characterized by high tariffs and restrictions on a wide range of hardware and software components.
Historically, the ranking has been dominated by US-developed systems. However, LineShine has brought China back to the top after almost a decade of missing the top spot.
Livermore, California-based El Capitan has held the top spot since 2024. Now benchmark results have confirmed that LineShine exceeds the processing capacity of the US system by more than 20 percent.
With a power consumption of about 42.2 megawatts, the Chinese supercomputer delivers 2,198 exaflops, which means it can perform more than 2 trillion operations per second.
One of the most striking features of LineShine is that, unlike most next-generation supercomputers, it does not utilize graphics processing units (GPUs). Instead, it relies solely on central processing units (CPUs), components widely used in smartphones, desktop computers and laptops but rarely found in large-scale scientific computing systems.
Another notable feature is that the entire infrastructure is built with hardware and software developed in China. The LineShine architecture is based on the LingKun platform and consists of approximately 45,000 LX2 processors. Each processor has 304 cores and runs at a frequency of 1.55 GHz.
The nodes are connected by a high-speed network called LingQi, designed to minimize latency and speed data exchange. The entire system runs on Kylin OS, a Linux-based operating system widely used in China’s scientific and government computing infrastructure.
China’s clear message to the US
China’s return to the top of the TOP500 rankings has been interpreted as an achievement that goes beyond simply having the world’s fastest supercomputer, as the country looks to show the world that its technology industry can thrive despite lacking access to key American technologies.
During Donald Trump’s first administration and throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, the United States imposed tight export controls on advanced computing components, software and platforms in an attempt to ponderous China’s technological advances. In response, Beijing adopted similar measures.
These restrictions have intensified under the current Trump administration, particularly through tariffs and limits on imports of graphics processors, advanced chips and other components related to artificial intelligence (AI) – a technology that now underpins much of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
They have these limitations forced China will invest in the development of up-to-date architectures and technologies enabling the construction of supercomputers that will be able to compete with the most effective American systems despite the lack of access to some of the most current resources.
This story originally appeared on WIRED in Spanish and was translated from Spanish.