The UK government has announced the provision of more than £50m to fund the building of Europe's fastest supercomputer in Britain.

The High-End Computing Terascale Resource, or Hector, will be run by the Research Councils UK and will be used to simulate everything from the movement of molecules in chemical experiments to weather patterns.

The computer will come online in 2007 and is expected to have an initial capability equivalent to 50 to 100 peak teraflops.

"Hector will be an indispensable tool for scientists across the entire breadth of the UK research base," said science minister Lord Sainsbury.

"The computational limits of the existing facilities are now being reached as new and increasingly complex research programmes place increasing demands on the computing power available.

"It is imperative that our scientists are able to access the best possible computer facilities to build on, and support, the work they do in the laboratory."

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council will be managing the project on behalf of Research Councils UK which is itself making a significant contribution towards the cost of the service.

The Natural Environment Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council are also contributing financially to the project emphasising the breadth of science that will be supported.