China's LineShine supercomputer tops global Top500 list

China’s LineShine supercomputer, housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, achieved 2.198 exaflops and rose to the No. 1 position in the TOP500 ranking released on Tuesday. It displaced the United States’ El Capitan, which fell to second place. LineShine runs exclusively on conventional CPUs and consumes about 42.2 MW of power.

El Capitan remains operational at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, while two other U.S. machines in Tennessee and Illinois now occupy the third and fourth spots. Germany’s Jupiter sits at No. 5. Other nations represented in the top ten include Italy, Switzerland and Japan. The Greek supercomputer “ΔΑΙΔΑΛΟΣ” (GRNET) placed 31st on the TOP500 and 23rd on the Green500 list.

The TOP500 and Green500 listings were published at the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg. These exascale systems support a broad range of applications, from medical research and climate modeling to nuclear simulations and artificial‑intelligence workloads, underscoring their strategic importance for national technological competitiveness.