China’s LineShine becomes world’s fastest supercomputer

China has reclaimed the title of the world's fastest supercomputer for the first time since 2017, according to the latest TOP500 rankings released on Tuesday, June 23, 2026. The system, named LineShine, is located at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen and surpassed the previous champion, El Capitan, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

LineShine achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops on the High Performance Linpack benchmark, the standard test used by the TOP500 list, making it the fifth supercomputer globally to demonstrate exascale capacity. This performance is more than 20 percent faster than El Capitan's 1.809 exaflops. Notably, LineShine is the first exascale system to rely solely on central processing units, using over 13 million domestically designed CPUs, rather than incorporating the graphics processing units that power most other leading supercomputers.

The achievement marks a significant shift, as China had not submitted a system for the TOP500 ranking since 2023, a period coinciding with extensive U.S. export controls on advanced computing chips and technology. Experts suggest the submission itself signals a desire to...