LineShine, built by the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, achieved 2.198 exaflops of performance – nearly 2.2 quintillion calculations per second – surpassing the previous champion, El Capitan, at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which reached 1.809 exaflops.
It is also the first supercomputer to exceed two exaflops using only central processing units (CPUs), without relying on graphics processing units (GPUs) that power most of today’s leading supercomputers.
“This is the first time a computer with only CPUs has reached exascale,” TOP500 co-founder and Turing Award winner Jack Dongarra told the South China Morning Post.
“China can adapt to develop its own version of technology as good as – or maybe even better than – existing technology, despite US export controls,” Dongarra said.
