This volume contains the papers presented at the 5th International Workshop on Advanced Parallel Processing Technologies, APPT 2003. This series of workshops is designed to strengthen the cooperation between the German and Chinese institutions active in the area of these technologies. It has continued to grow, providing an excellent forum for reporting advances in parallel processing technologies. The 5th workshop itself addressed the entire gamut of related topics, ranging from the architectural aspects of parallel computer hardware and system software to the applied technologies for novel applications. For this workshop, we received over 191 full submissions from researchers all over the world. All the papers were peer-reviewed in depth and qualitatively graded on their relevance, originality, significance, presentation, and the overall appropriateness for their acceptance. Any concerns raised were discussed in the program committee. The organizing committee did an excellent job in selecting 78 papers (Among them, 21 were short ones) for presentation. In short, the papers included here represent the forefront of research from China, Germany, and the other countries.