HPC R&D Act passes house

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

The HPC R&D Act, which we’ve talked about before, passed the house on a voice vote yesterday according to the CRA’s Policy Blog:

The bill would amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991 (HPCC) to attempt to provide sustained, transparent access for the research community to federal HPC assets, assure a balanced research portfolio and beef up interagency planning. We like the bill and have endorsed it. (Here’s what it does (pdf) to current law.)

The bill now heads to the Senate (if you need a refresher on how all this works, set your wayback machine to 1975), where it hasn’t done well before, but may do better this time:

Previous versions of the bill in prior sessions of Congress have not fared well in the Senate, usually for reasons unrelated to the actual bill (Senate traffic jams and disputes between the House Science and Senate Commerce committees over other legislation are the most-often cited difficulties). But, talking with Senate staff, it appears the path to enactment this session is a bit smoother and freer of obstructions than in previous years.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the CRA’s Policy Blog is a tremendous resource. If you’re at all interested in how Federal actions impact computing, pay them a thanks with a click today.