Ranked: Top Countries by Computing Power

Ranked: Top Countries by Computing Power

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In this graphic, we break down the results of TOP500’s latest supercomputer ranking from a country perspective.

As of November 2024, the United States has the most systems in the TOP500 ranking, at 172. It also has the highest combined value of maximum achievable performance, at 6.5 million TFlops (Teraflops).

Data and Highlights

The following table lists the data used to create this visualization. One teraflop represents one trillion floating-point operations per second.

Note: Total adds to 499

After the U.S., other top countries by computing power include Japan, Italy, and Switzerland.

Japan’s most powerful system is Supercomputer Fugaku, developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu in Japan. Finished in 2021, the project cost a total of $1.2 billion and was once the most powerful supercomputer in the world.

It’s interesting to note that after a few years, newer systems like America’s El Capitan have become significantly more powerful and cost less to build (El Capitan cost roughly $600 million).

China’s False Ranking

In the Nov. 2020 edition of the TOP500, China ranked third behind the U.S. and Japan in terms of maximum performance. It also had 214 systems in the ranking, the most out of any country.

Today, China is ranked seventh, with only 63 systems making it into the TOP500—but this ranking is most likely being skewed downwards. Many believe that China is withholding details about its newest supercomputers for geopolitical reasons.

It’s a well known situation that China has these computers, and they have been operating for a while. They have not run the benchmarks, but [the community has] a general idea of their architectures and capabilities.
Jack Dongarra, co-founder of TOP500

From China’s perspective, publicly revealing these computers could result in further U.S. trade restrictions.

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