The past decade has seen an explosive growth in atomic-level structures determined by X-ray crystallography. Synchrotron radiation and a number of technical advances related quite directly to its development have fueled this growth. With the most recent advances coming to be used collectively and new resources being built, the foundation is laid for a dramatic further expansion of synchrotron crystallography in the next decade. Both the high-throughput applications of structural genomics and also the challenging studies of macromolecular machinery are expected to flourish.