After 10 years of preparation, mainly in the United States, the arrival of the first Exascale supercomputers (10^18 operation per seconds) represents a breakthrough. These machines confirm the trend started since the beginning of the 2000s of a shift towards the usage of specialized architectures such as GPU to provide computing power. The French Exascale machine that will soon be installed at the CEA/TGCC will also rely on such technology. It is therefore critical for the CEA and all the French and European players who aim to use this machine to be able to rely on a solid software base acting as a catalyst ensuring full use of its power and sustainability of the application software. Indeed, applications developed with software technologies prior to the arrival of accelerators cannot or very poorly take advantage of GPUs. New solutions have been developed, but European approaches are lagging behind. CExA therefore proposes to develop sovereign software catalyst or middleware for Exascale Computation ensuring control of the roadmap and adequacy to the needs of European and French applications. Technically, this development is based on existing open-source software bricks and in particular KOKKOS. The choice to adopt and adapt an existing open-source software stack ensures responsiveness and efficiency while maintaining strategic independence. With this project, the CEA will acquire mastery of an essential link in the software stack by increasing its skills on existing tools while filling gaps on critical points for the specific needs of the CEA.

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