A supercomputer in China has displaced its US counterparts to become the world's most powerful, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese machine has topped the Top500 rankings and intensifying questions about Europe's position in the global technology race. The LineShine computer in Shenzhen achieved 2.198 exaflops, meaning it can perform more than 2 quintillion calculations per second, according to scientists involved in the Top500 project released on Tuesday.
The development comes as the European Union pursues a €20bn plan to build AI "gigafactories" equipped with vast supercomputers, announced last year, in an attempt to catch leaders in the US and China. The LineShine system at China's National Supercomputing Center now outranks El Capitan at the US government's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which has dropped to second place, ahead of two other US supercomputers at national laboratories in Tennessee and Illinois.
Europe's Competitive Position
Germany's Jupiter supercomputer has fallen to fifth place in the global rankings. The five top-ranked machines are the only publicly verified exascale computers in the world. Other countries with machines in the top 10 include Italy, Switzerland and Japan. The United Kingdom has 11 machines in the list of 500, with the University of Bristol's Isambard-AI the highest ranked of that group at 11, down two places since the last ranking. Western Australia's Setonix, ranked 86th, is the best performing of the four machines located in Australia.
The Technical and Energy Challenge
China's LineShine differs from other high-performance computers in that it runs entirely on conventional computer chips, or CPUs, instead of the graphics processors, or GPUs, commonly used for AI. It requires about 42.2 megawatts of electricity to operate, according to the list. The University of Bristol's Isambard-AI is fitted with 5,400 Nvidia "superchips" and sits inside a black metal cage topped with razor wire.
EU's Industrial Strategy
The AI gigafactories will target "moonshot" innovations in areas such as healthcare, biotech, industry, robotics and scientific discovery, according to the EU strategy document. The best-performing AI factories have supercomputers equipped with up to 25,000 advanced AI processors, but a gigafactory would exceed 100,000 AI processors, the EU strategy document said. These power-hungry facilities, which can require huge amounts of water for cooling, should run "as much as possible" on a green energy supply, an EU official said, with plans for "recycling" water if it was used. Campaigners fear power-hungry datacentres could undermine Europe's climate ambitions.
Why This Matters:
The return of Chinese dominance in supercomputing after a ninth-year absence from the top spot underscores the scale of Europe's technological challenge. The EU's €20bn gigafactory plan, announced one year ago, represents a significant fiscal commitment at a time when member states face competing budgetary pressures. The tension between climate goals and the energy demands of advanced computing infrastructure highlights the difficult trade-offs European policymakers face: pursuing technological sovereignty requires massive power consumption that could conflict with decarbonisation targets. With the UK holding 11 machines but none in the global top 10, and Germany's Jupiter falling to fifth, Europe's competitiveness in high-performance computing lags behind both the US and China. The question is whether centralised EU industrial policy can close this gap more effectively than national strategies, or whether the €20bn commitment risks duplicating efforts across member states without achieving the scale needed to compete with Beijing and Washington.