China has regained the title of home to the world's fastest supercomputer, a major development in the intensifying technology competition between Beijing and Washington and a sign that Chinese researchers continue to advance despite U.S. export controls targeting advanced computing technologies.

Researchers announced Tuesday that LineShine, a new supercomputer operating at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, surpassed El Capitan, the U.S. system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that had held the top position in global rankings since November 2024.

According to benchmark results published with the latest TOP500 rankings, LineShine achieved 2.198 exaflops on the High Performance Linpack benchmark, more than 20% faster than El Capitan.

The achievement marks the first time since 2017 that a China-based system has occupied the No. 1 position in the TOP500 rankings, the widely followed list that tracks the world's most powerful supercomputers.

One notable aspect of LineShine is its architecture.

Unlike most of the world's leading supercomputers, which rely heavily on graphics processing units, or GPUs, to accelerate computing tasks and artificial intelligence workloads, LineShine achieved its performance with a CPU-only design built around Chinese-developed technology. The system uses China's LingKun platform, LingQi interconnect network and Kylin operating system.

"It's an impressive system," Dr. Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist and organizer of the TOP500 rankings, said in an interview with The New York Times. "They upped us by developing a system that is not reliant on GPUs.”

The development comes amid growing competition between the United States and China over artificial intelligence, semiconductor technology and advanced computing.

The United States continues to lead in many areas of cutting-edge AI through companies such as OpenAI, Google and Nvidia. At the same time, China has accelerated efforts to build domestic alternatives and reduce reliance on foreign technology, including through advances by companies such as DeepSeek and government-backed supercomputing initiatives.

The Trump administration has maintained tariffs and export restrictions aimed at limiting China's access to advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing technology. Those restrictions have focused heavily on high-end GPUs, which are considered essential for training advanced AI models.

LineShine's success has prompted some experts to argue that existing controls may not go far enough.

"The U.S. government should have stronger controls on the export and manufacturing of CPUs for the China market," Jimmy Goodrich of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation told the Times. "It is a loophole in the current regulations."

Experts said the breakthrough demonstrates that Chinese researchers remain capable of developing world-class computing systems despite restrictions on some U.S. technologies.

The latest TOP500 rankings also expand the small number of exascale supercomputers operating worldwide. LineShine joins El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora, and Europe's JUPITER Booster among systems capable of performing more than one quintillion calculations per second.

For China, the return to the top of the supercomputing rankings represents both a technological milestone and a symbolic victory in its competition with the United States for leadership in advanced computing.