The powder mixed electro-discharge machining (PMEDM) technologies of silicon carbide particle reinforced aluminium matrix composites (SiCp/Al) are researched in this article. SiCp/Al is widely acknowledged as one of the most competitive varieties of metal matrix composites, firstly applied in the aviation, aerospace and military fields, and gradually extended. Because of the hard and brittle SiC particles contained in this material, mechanical machining is difficult, but EDM does have some advantages. To the same kind of moderate volume fraction (45%) SiCp/Al material, a comparative test was conducted using two kinds of processing methods, traditional EDM (the former) and PMEDM (the latter). Effects of the electrical parameters of both processing methods on the material removal rate (MRR) were analyzed and compared. After processing, the surface roughness value of the former is Ra1.386μm while the latter is Ra0.406μm which is only 29.3% of the former. The surface hardness was also tested by the MTS nano indenter: the former is about 1.7GPa, and the latter is about 2.2GPa which is 1.3 times of the former. Finally, to the machined surface, the micro-topography and the component of ‘white point’ were observed and analyzed by using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy spectrum respectively. Experiments and investigation results show that the PMEDM has a better performance compared with traditional EDM in improving the roughness, hardness and so on. So PMEDM will have a great potential in the processing of aluminium matrix composites.