Computer Federation of China publish A list of the country’s 100 most powerful supercomputers, but the country’s deliberate obfuscation of their true computing power appears to have taken to a new level. just like last yearthe Chinese entity was too cautious to include its so-called ExaFLOPS-class supercomputer on the list. What’s even more surprising, however, is that there aren’t any new systems included in the list. The only difference between the top 100 most powerful supercomputers in China in 2023 and 2024 is their cumulative computing power, which indicates a slight upgrade. Chinese entities are likely deliberately withholding information about their most powerful systems to avoid provoking more restrictions from the U.S. government.
China’s top three supercomputers 2024 Same as the #1 heterogeneous CPU + GPU system 2023. The top machine on the official list is deployed in 2023; it has 15,974,400 CPU cores and a maximum Linpack performance of 487.94 PFLOPS. Machine power ratio Japan’s Fugaku Supercomputer (442 FP64 PetaFLOPS), but significantly behind the American ExaFLOPS-class machines El Capitan (1.742 ExaFLOPS), Frontier (1.353 ExaFLOPS) and Aurora (1.012 ExaFLOPS).
China’s second-highest performance supercomputer will be launched in 2022, with 460,000 CPU cores and a maximum Linpack performance of 208.26 PFLOPS. China’s third most powerful machine (well, officially) is a system with 285,000 CPU cores and a maximum Linpack performance of 125.04 PFLOPS.
| owner | hardware | Rmax,PFLOPS | Say, PFLOPS | CPU core | efficiency(%) | Year of deployment |
| Server provider | Heterogeneous many-core processors | 487.94 | 620 | 15974400 | 78.7 | 2023 |
| Server provider | CPU+GPU heterogeneous many-core processor | 208.26 | 390 | 460,000 | 53.4 | 2022 |
| Server provider | CPU+GPU heterogeneous many-core processor | 125.04 | 240 | 285000 | 52.1 | 2021 |
| National Parallel Computer Engineering Technology Research Center | 40960*Shenwei SW26010 260C 1.45GHz | 93.015 | 125.436 | 10649600 | 74.2 | 2016 |
| Server provider | CPU+GPU heterogeneous many-core processor | 87.04 | 160 | 190000 | 51.2 | 2021 |
The difference in overall performance between China’s official top 100 supercomputers in 2023 and 2024 is negligible. Back in 2023, they offered an aggregate computing power of 1.398 ExaFLOPS, while in 2024, their performance increased to 1.406 ExaFLOPS.
However, the official list of the top 100 supercomputers may not accurately reflect China’s supercomputing capabilities. Jack Dongarra, a prominent figure in the supercomputer industry and co-founder of Top500.org, said last year China has at least three ExaFLOPS-class machines Performance ranges from 1.3 ExaFLOPS to 1.7 ExaFLOPS, powered by Chinese-designed hardware, as well as 2 ExaFLOPS machines with Hygon x86 processors. This news has never been confirmed, but Jack Dongarra’s words are usually taken seriously by the industry.
For China’s top supercomputers, the Computer Society of China has not released its exact specifications, possibly to conceal the hardware suppliers of these systems. Analysts are often keen to figure out what hardware might be used and who could provide it. Presumably, these machines are powered by industry-standard CPUs and GPUs, with most of their key components obtained through the gray channel. However, there are also systems in the top ten that are powered by processors and accelerators developed in China.