Dawning 4000A, China’s most powerful supercomputer, ranked as the world’s10th (based on Linpack benchmarks of 11,264 GFlops in Rpeak and 8,061 GFlops in Rmax) by the Top500 Supercomputer Sites on June 22 this year, will soon be located in the Shanghai Supercomputer Center (SSC), marking China’s achievement in developing high-performance computing technology. The R&D of Dawning 4000A is one of the 15 projects executed under the 863 High-tech R&D Program, under the aegis of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology. Dawning 4000A was jointly developed and designed by the Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the SSC and the China-based enterprise Dawning Information Industry. R&D began in 2001; sponsorship by the 863 Program was signed in October 2002; system design was completed in 2003; and the entire project was finished in June 2004. Dawning 4000A, which is to be a major node of China’s nationwide networks, is intended to provide computing and information processing services for a wide range of applications for research organizations, manufacturing industries and commerce sectors in Eastern China.