The call will support research and innovation actions that will develop and adapt HPC applications for the exascale and post-exascale era. Adapting existing applications to exascale computing capability requires significant changes and in some cases current application codes cannot run on exascale or post-exascale systems without a complete rethink or substantial code rewrite.

Requirements for CoEs:

• Clear identification of the targeted applications and related codes, including their user basis and the global impact in their domain.
• Demonstrable advances of the targeted HPC applications towards highly scalable, optimised flagship codes and exascale performance (both computing and extreme data). This includes developing, maintaining, porting, optimising (if needed re-designing) and scaling HPC application codes, addressing the full scientific/industrial workflow, particularly covering data aspects; testing and validating codes and quality assurance
• Addressing the exascale and post exascale related technical challenges, such as load balancing; resilience; heterogeneity programming models, in particular accelerator-based architecture programming; run-time systems; workflow management tools; development environments and production environments.
• Involvement in co-design activities (hardware, software, codes), including the collaboration with HPC vendors and the identification of suitable applications relevant to the development of European HPC technologies towards exascale and collaboration with European initiatives (e.g. EPI, RISC- V, EuroHPC JU Pilots).
• Activities to improve the energy efficiency of applications, algorithms, methods, libraries and/or tools.
• Enlarging and expanding HPC applications development and use, in particular for new user communities in EU countries and countries associated to Horizon Europe that are members of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking currently developing and advancing their HPC infrastructure and ecosystem.
• Federating capabilities and integrating communities around exascale computing in Europe.
• Include clear KPIs on the optimal employment of current and/or emerging HPC technologies, allowing the assessment of the progress towards the objectives, both in terms of outputs and ultimate impact.
• Coordinate within the European ecosystem, including Competence Centres, to address the skills gap in the targeted exascale applications and codes, by specialised training and capacity building measures to develop the human capital resources for increased adoption of exascale solutions.
• Coordinate with Competence Centres to ensure wider access to codes and foster their uptake by scientific user communities.