About Unity

Unity is a collaborative research computing platform with a variety of member institutions. For questions about Unity services and your specific institution, please contact hpc@umass.edu.

People

Unity is supported by an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional team of systems administrators and research computing facilitators.

The systems administration team manages the hardware, networking, software, and services that form Unity. Our sysadmins are responsible for hundreds of compute nodes, petabytes of storage, and services like our Open OnDemand deployment and Unity portal.

The facilitation team assists Unity users with deploying their workloads onto Unity and advising on workflow optimization, software tuning, and technical issues. In addition, the facilitation team provides HPC workshops and manages an active Slack for the Unity Community. For groups needing mid to long term project support, facilitator time is available on an hourly basis. For help, contact us.

Our Unity alumni page acknowledges past team members and their current accomplishments.

Compute resources

As of June 2026, Unity is a 550 node, ~29,000 core cluster based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Slurm 25.11. Unity features a heterogeneous network containing ethernet and IB linked compute nodes, and hosts a variety of compute node architectures. The majority of compute nodes are Intel or AMD x86-64 nodes, with a small number of ARM and Power9 nodes to supplement. Additionally, Unity contains ~1400 Nvidia GPUs, including ~300 GH200, H100, A100, and L40S GPUs. Visit the node list for a complete description of Unity’s compute nodes.

Storage resources

Unity contains 1.5 PB high performance VAST for home, work, and scratch directories, 1.5PB of whitebox QLC flash with ZFS for additional scratch, and 3.3 PB storage from the New England Storage Exchange (NESE), a regionally managed Ceph cluster located at the same data center as Unity, the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). Unity has a variety of storage types that suit different performance and size needs.

Purchasing

Research groups with compute or storage needs beyond the basic Unity access provided by their institution should contact our help desk at hpc@umass.edu. Hardware purchases must be approved by the Unity team prior to purchase.

Grant information

We provide a comprehensive grant proposal boilerplate document to easily write Unity resources and purchases into your grants. Contact hpc@umass.edu to discuss your grant requirements.

Acceptable Use Policy

Unity’s Acceptable Use Policy provides the terms under which Unity may be accessed and used. All use of Unity must adhere to these guidelines to ensure fair and equitable access. For any questions, reach out to hpc@umass.edu.

Security statement

Unity’s Security Statement provides information on the security of the Unity HPC Platform. For any further questions or concerns, reach out to hpc@umass.edu.