TOP500 at ISC’26: We have a New Number 1 Supercomputer

4 days ago

LineShine supercomputer from Shenzhen, China becomes the new number 1 on the TOP500 list, marking China's first submission in 9 years.
The system is CPU-only, using the Armv9-compliant LX2 CPU with 304 cores, delivering 60.3 TFLOP/s per CPU and a total of 2.198 Exaflops sustained FP64 performance.
LineShine also ranks number 1 in the HPCG benchmark with 22.004 Petaflops/second, surpassing El Capitan.
A new number 6 system, HPC7 from Eni in Italy, uses AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, giving Italy more TOP500 compute than any other European country.
Fugaku, the former number 1, drops to number 9 but remains number 3 on the HPCG list, showing its lasting efficiency.
The Green500 Top 10 list remains unchanged for the first time, though overall HPC efficiency has improved due to retirements of older systems.
The TOP500 list will now be managed by ACM SIGHPC, providing DOI numbers for easier referencing.
Questions arise about whether China will submit other exascale systems and if this will increase U.S. DOE funding for supercomputers.
The absence of large AI systems like xAI's Colossus 2 from the TOP500 raises curiosity about their benchmarking practices.

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