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The High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (HPCA) is a Congressional Act that was declared on December 9, 1991 during the 102nd United
States Congress. It is also known as the Gore Bill since it was primarily developed and endorsed by
Senator Al Gore in order to create and develop the National Information Infrastructure and create
funding for the National Research and Education Network (NREN).
Techopedia Explains High Performance Computing Act of 1991
The High Performance Computing Act of 1991 can trace its history from the U.S. government’s prior efforts in regards to the creation of a national networking infrastructure that interconnects endpoints or nodes that would still be operational even in the event of attacks on American soil. This started with the ARPANET in the ’60s as well as with the 1980s funding initiative of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet).
HPCA renewed the effort of creating a nationwide networking infrastructure in the context of building the “information superhighway,” which then spurred many technological developments such as the creation of high-speed fiber optic computer networks, the development of the Mosaic browser and eventually included the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative.
The Act was developed by Senator Al Gore after learning about the report “Toward a National Research Network” in 1988, which was submitted to congress by Leonard Kleinrock, one of the major contributors of the ARPANET and professor of Computer Science at UCLA. The Bill was eventually enacted on December 9, 1991 and paved the way toward the modern computing era. The Gore Bill led to the funding of the Mosaic browser, to which many scholars attribute the beginning of the internet boom of the ’90s. The HPCA helped fund the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, where the aforementioned Mosaic browser was developed, as well as many other technological initiatives that laid the foundation of today’s modern computer networks and the internet as a whole.
