National Research Center for Intelligent Computing Systems (NCIC) was founded in March, 1990, whose purpose is to apply the national advanced technologies to computer area by the leaders in charge of 863-306 projects. She aims at the research and development of computer systems with super performance. High-performance computers are still in the limitation list of strategic technologies from western countries. In this way, it concerns the national security and plays a key role in the economic and social development.
    The Dawning series of computer systems developed by NCIC not only have significant academic significance, but also have been widely applied. They can serve as host servers in various of Calculating Center, Network Center, Accounting Center, Balancing Center, Charging Center, Data Center, Process Center, Electronic Trade and Transaction Center, as well as in colleges, science research academes, large- or middle-scale enterprises and governmental organizations. Furthermore, they are also applied to the fields such as oil, meteorology, hydraulics, electrical power supply, astronautics and aeronautics as well as auto and ship design simulation, earthquake survey prediction, environment survey analysis, finance and securities, bio-information procession, web information service and basic science computation.

    Since its founding, NCIC had undertaken many projects funded by the China's National “863” High-tech Program, National Science Foundation, National “973” plan, National Key Technologies R&D Program in the 9th and 10th five-year etc. NCIC had developed the Dawning-I symmetric multiprocessor system (SMP), the Dawning-1000 massively parallel processing(MPP) system, the Dawning 2000-I and Dawning 2000-II high performance cluster system, the Dawning 3000 and Dawning 4000-L super-server and application system, the NC-OCR integrated Chinese printing character recognition system, the NCIC-Press graphic and typeset printing software, the Dawning TechRoute and TechLine web server, the Dawning NT-Cluster system, the Dawning High-availability(HA) System, the Dawning scalable parallel computer system etc. The Dawning-I had won the special award of technology advancement of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994 and the second level national technology advancement award in 1995, it was also written into the 1994 Government Report of China National Congress. The Dawning-1000 had won the special award of technology advancement of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1996 and the first level national technology advancement award in 1997. The Dawning-2000 had won the first level award of technology advancement of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2000 and second level national technology advancement award in 2001. The Dawning Scalable Parallel Computer system had won second level award of technology advancement of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001.

    To make the research works industrialized and commercialized, NCIC found the Beijing Dawning computer company in 1993. It is an independent high-tech corporation. In June 1995, based on the 2.5 million dollars intellectual property of Dawning-I and funds from several investors, the Dawning Information Industry Corporation Ltd was found. The founding of Dawning introduced a new mechanism for the commercialization of national high performance computer. After years of effort, now Dawning has become a high-tech with more than 100 million total capitals and the only company in China that can provide full series of server products ranging from thousands of dollars to millions of dollars.