U.S. supercomputer gains Top500 crown, China dominates in total number of systems

U.S. supercomputer "Frontier" held the top spot on the new edition of the Top500 supercomputer list, while China continues to lead in the number of supercomputers.

Frontier, running at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S. state of Tennessee, is the first U.S. system with a peak performance exceeding one exaflop per second, according to a release on the new ranking on Sunday.

It is the first true "exascale machine" in the world, said the release.

Japanese supercomputer "Fugaku," which held the top position on the Top500 list for two years, has dropped to second place.

At number three is Finland's "LUMI" system, a new entrant in the Top500 list with a High Performance Linpack benchmark of nearly 152 PFlop per second. LUMI is also the largest system in Europe.

U.S. supercomputer "Summit," an IBM-built system running at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S. state of Tennessee, dropped to fourth place from second on the previous list.

Another U.S. system, "Sierra," running at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the U.S. state of California, ranked fifth.

Chinese supercomputers "Sunway TaihuLight" and "Tianhe-2A" are among the top 10 systems on the Top500 list.

China continues to dominate the list regarding the number of systems, claiming 173 supercomputers on the list, followed by the United States, with 126 systems. The two countries make up nearly two-thirds of the supercomputers on the Top500.

The Top500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computer systems globally. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of supercomputers twice a year.