  The "Square Kilometre Array" (SKA) is a large international radio telescope
project characterised, as suggested by its name, by a total collecting area of
approximately one square kilometre, and consisting of several interferometric
arrays to observe at metric and centimetric wavelengths. The deployment of the
SKA will take place in two sites, in South Africa and Australia, and in two
successive phases. From its Phase 1, the SKA will be one of the most formidable
scientific machines ever deployed by mankind, and by far the most impressive in
terms of data throughput and required computing power. With the participation
of almost 200 authors from forty research institutes and six private companies,
the publication of this French SKA white paper illustrates the strong
involvement in the SKA project of the French astronomical community and of a
rapidly growing number of major scientific and technological players in the
fields of Big Data, high performance computing, energy production and storage,
as well as system integration.
