  We describe recent progress on generation of gauge configurations using the
Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action that was designed by the
HPQCD/UKQCD collaboration. The HISQ action requires two levels of smearing with
a reunitarization of the links before the second smearing. We describe how we
deal with the occurrence of occasional large forces arising from the
reunitarization step. The MILC collaboration is currently generating ensembles
with approximate lattice spacings of 0.15, 0.12, 0.09, and 0.06 fm, with the
strange and charm quark masses close to their physical values and the mass of
the light quarks m_l set to 0.2 m_s. We present recent results for pion taste
splittings, light hadron masses, the static potential, the eta_c dispersion
relation and the topological susceptibility.
