Japan has revealed plans to build a supercomputer so staggeringly powerful that it will be five times swifter than the 500 fastest systems on the planet today – combined.

The supercomputer will boast a peak performance of 10 petaflops and should be completed in 2011, officials from Japan's ministry for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced on Monday. This means it will be able to perform 10 x 10¹⁵ mathematical calculations every second – better known as floating-point operations (or flops). A desktop computer, for perspective, has a maximum performance of roughly one billion flops.

Both NEC and Hitachi have announced plans to contribute to the project, which will also include the University of Tokyo, Kyushu University, and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, all in Japan. The total cost is likely to be between ¥80- and ¥100 billion ($712- and $890 million), officials said.

The record-breaking behemoth will be used to simulate climate change, galaxy formations and to predict the behaviour of new drugs.

Floating points

The fastest computer in the world today is Blue Gene/L, developed by IBM and the US government and installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, US. This system has demonstrated the ability to perform at a peak speed of 136.8 teraflops – or 136.8 x 10¹² flops.

But the design of Blue Gene/L and other top systems represent a departure from older supercomputers, which often made use of off-the-shelf chips and other equipment.

Japan's 10 petaflop machine could feature an even more specialised design, perhaps incorporating several different breeds of processor in one single system.

"The architecture they're talking about is a hybrid," says Jack Dongarra, at the University of Tennessee, US, who compiles the Top 500 list of supercomputers twice each year. "To get to 10 petaflops, I think you'd need that." The planned system may even include some chips that are designed to perform just one type of calculation, albeit at lightning speed, he adds.

Specialised chips

Japan’s announcement is likely to revitalise the ongoing battle between the US and Japan for supercomputing supremacy.

Japan tasted glory in June 2002 when NEC's Earth Simulator, based in Yokohama, Japan, gained the top spot from IBM. But this only spurred the US government to pour extra funding into supercomputing, leading to the development of Blue Gene/L and other systems.

Dongarra says the new announcement could have a similar impact in the US this time, too. "It opens up new horizons for science," he told New Scientist.

The most recent world supercomputer ranking list was revealed at the International Supercomputing Conference 2005, held in Heidelberg, Germany, in June.