Objective
Modern high-performance processors increasingly rely on parallelism and specialized memory hierarchies, but legacy codebases struggle to harness these advances. Optimizing such applications is essential for energy efficiency and performance but requires expertise in performance engineering. Domain scientists, faced with the growing demand for computational throughput, are forced to be low-level programming experts. Worse, performance tuning often leads to non-local changes across large codebases: this is unsustainable, inflates the maintenance burden, and obfuscates scientific logic.
Through previous ERC-funded research, we demonstrated that data-centric programming (DaCe) provides a path for separating scientific logic from performance optimization and specialization. DaCe was shown to work at scales ranging from small computational kernels to applications with up to a million lines of code when guided by performance experts.
Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) enable coding agents to excel at tasks like API usage and documentation-based pattern matching (“how do I use OpenSSL to do X in Python?”). However, they consistently fail at tuning performance-critical imperative code, as this requires understanding dataflow and how to correctly restructure it. Finally, the resulting changes span many lines of code, requiring more context than available to LLMs.
In this project, we aim to democratize performance tuning by integrating LLMs with DaCe — not as direct code optimizers, but as reasoning interfaces that use a DaCe backend. We propose a novel approach in which users provide plain imperative code (Python or Fortran). Our system, DGPT, powered by a reasoning model, compiles the code into DaCe, analyzes it, applies performance-improving transformations, and verifies the resulting code correctness and performance. Thus, users will see explanations, speedups, and a cleaner, more efficient version of their code.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology environmental engineering ecosystem-based management climatic change mitigation
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC-POC - HORIZON ERC Proof of Concept Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2026-POC
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.