hpc.bw: an evaluation of short-term performance engineering projects

Increasing amounts of data and simulations in scientific areas enforce the need of improved software performance. The maintaining scientific staff is often not primarily trained for this purpose or lacks personnel and time to address software performance issues. A particular aim of the dtec.bw-funded project hpc.bw is to tackle some of these shortcomings. A pillar of the hpc.bw agenda is the offer of a low-threshold consultancy and development support focused on performance engineering. This paper provides an insight on our related activities. We illustrate the structure of our annual calls for short-term performance engineering projects, we outline our results at the example of the performance engineering project “benEFIT - Numerical simulation of non-destructive testing in concrete”, and we draw a first conclusion on the current procedure.