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According to the Kyodo News, Japan is working on a computer that runs faster than Tom Cruise from reality. In fact, it'll be 73 times faster than the world's current speed demon, IBM's American Blue Gene/L, or so says a very confident group of Japanese scientists.

Currently, IBM's already mind-blowingly fast Blue Gene supercomputer is capable of 136.8 teraflops, or 136.8 trillion calculations per second.

But Japan thinks it can do 73 times better by building one operating at 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second.

The five-year project is expected to cost between 80 and 100 billion yen ($714 million to $893 million).

The ever-careful decision making Japanese government said the plans are not yet approved but a decision will be made by the end of August. If approved in the national budget, the supercomputer is expected to be delivered by March 2011.

Still wounded after the Blue Gene took over the world's fastest computer over Japan's Earth Simulator supercomputer in 2004 (operating at a crawling 35.9 teraflops), the Land of the Rising Sun hopes to reclaim the crown.

While the Earth Simulator tracks global sea temperatures, rainfall, and a number of geological indicators to predict natural disasters, the next generation of supercomputer is hoped to expand the capabilities to simulating galaxy formation and human body reaction to various medicines.