The Japanese government said on Monday that plans were underway to develop a computer that would operate at a speed that is 73 times faster than the current fastest supercomputer.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology plans to use the machine for a range of complex tasks including research on the formation of the galaxy and medicinal research.

Construction would cost some 80 to 100 billion yen ($715-900 million US) of which the government would request 10 billion yen ($90 million US) to begin development in the next fiscal year. No formal decision on the project has been made, although one is expected by August.

Officials have said the computer is expected to be complete by 2011.

The current fastest computer is an American system built by IBM called "Blue Gene." It can operate at a speed of 136.8 teraflops, or 136.8 trillion calculations per second. However, the proposed computer would run at 10 petaflops, which is 10 quadrillion calculations per second.

Japan had previously held the record for the fastest supercomputer until 2004, with its Earth Simulator. That computer is used to track climate and movement of the earth's crust in an effort to predict natural disasters, and runs at a speed of 35.9 teraflops.

Now the Earth Simulator is ranked fourth behind IBM's two Blue Gene systems and a computer run by NASA, called Columbia.