China has regained its position as the home to the world's fastest publicly listed supercomputer for the first time since 2017, according to the latest TOP500 ranking released on Tuesday.

The system, called LineShine and located at the National Supercomputing Centre in the southern city of Shenzhen, displaced the U.S. machine El Capitan from the top spot.

The TOP500 list, published twice a year, ranks the world's most powerful known supercomputers based on a standardized performance benchmark. The latest edition was unveiled at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Hamburg.

LineShine achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops, equivalent to more than 2 quintillion calculations per second. El Capitan, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, recorded 1.809 exaflops.

Supercomputers are used for applications including climate modelling, materials research, industrial development and artificial intelligence, making the rankings a closely watched indicator in the technology competition between China and the U.S.

El Capitan, Frontier and Aurora, all based in the U.S., occupied the next three positions in the ranking. Germany's Jupiter Booster system at the Julich Research Centre ranked fifth.