Sir Alan Sugar has opened a new grid computing scheme at Queen Mary University of London.

The system will link computers around the country into a 100,000 processor unit with 182 terabytes of storage.

It will be used to perform complex modelling on a variety of projects, including analysing the malaria parasite and examining the formation of plasma.

Dr Alex Martin, who manages the cluster at Queen Mary, said: "Computing has always been useful in science, but it is becoming essential.

"Clusters like this make it easier and faster to obtain results in many scientific fields, and for the new generation of particle physics experiments that we work with, there would be no other way to deal with the data being produced."

Sir Alan's computer company, Viglen, supplied much of the hardware at the site and will continue to be involved in the project.

The resulting grid will be 10 billion times faster than the original Amstrad computer and can process in one second what would have taken the first Amstrad 317 years.

"While many people know me for The Apprentice, my staff and I continue to work hard to be at the cutting edge of industry," said Sir Alan.

"At Viglen we have been a leading provider of IT solutions to higher education for the past three decades, and the development of this computer at Queen Mary will hopefully enable major scientific breakthroughs in years to come."