China's Salip Supercomputer, LineShine, Becomes the Fastest in the World

The Tianhe-1 supercomputer server room in Tianjin, China. Supercomputers are used for scientific research, artificial intelligence, to climate modeling. Photo: Xinhua.

China is back at the top of the world's supercomputer competition. The machine named LineShine, located in Shenzhen, displaced the United States' El Capitan and immediately ranked first on the Top500 list.

Launching a report by The Guardian Wednesday, June 24, this is the first time since 2017 that a Chinese supercomputer has led the list, which is often used as a measure of a country's technological strength.

LineShine recorded a performance of 2.198 exaflops. This means that this machine is capable of performing more than 2 quintillion calculations per second. Top500 is a list of the world's fastest supercomputers.

Interestingly, LineShine runs entirely with a CPU, a conventional computer chip that is the main brain of a computer. This machine does not use a GPU, a graphics processor that is widely used for artificial intelligence or AI.

According to the list, LineShine requires about 42.2 megawatts of electricity to operate. The need for such energy also shows the magnitude of the resources required in the supercomputer race.

Supercomputers have a big role in modern research. Machines like this can be used to find medical breakthroughs, model the climate, simulate nuclear explosions, predict human behavior, and even test weapons virtually.

El Capitan, the US government's supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, is now in second place. Two other US supercomputers at national laboratories in Tennessee and Illinois are behind it.

Germany's Jupiter dropped to fifth place. The top five machines are the only publicly verified exascale computers in the world. Exascale means computing capabilities at a level of more than a billion billion operations per second.

Other countries that entered the top 10 include Italy, Switzerland, and Japan.

The UK has 11 machines in the top 500 list. The University of Bristol's Isambard-AI is the highest of the UK at 11th, down two places from the previous list. The machine uses 5,400 Nvidia superchips and is housed in a razor-wire black metal cage.

Australia has four machines on the list. The best is Setonix in Western Australia, which ranks 86th.

The competition for supercomputers is getting tighter because AI requires giant computing power. Still referring to The Guardian's report, the European Union is said to have announced plans worth 20 billion euros to build a large supercomputer facility to develop the next generation of AI models.

The facility, called the AI gigafactory, is targeted to drive innovation in health, biotechnology, industry, robotics, and scientific discovery.

According to the EU strategy document, the best AI factories today use up to 25,000 advanced AI processors. The Gigafactory will surpass 100,000 AI processors.

However, this ambition also brings energy challenges. Data centers and supercomputers require large amounts of electricity and water for cooling. EU officials said the facility should use as much green energy as possible and recycle water when used.

Environmental activists are concerned that energy-hungry data centers could undermine Europe's climate goals. The competition for supercomputers is now not just about who is the fastest, but also who is able to manage their energy needs and environmental impact.