Presenter: Erik Fröjdh from Paul Scherrer Institut
The detector group at PSI develops high-performance X-ray detectors for synchrotrons and free-electron lasers. Traditionally, software for detector characterisation and data analysis was developed by PhD students and postdocs for specific use cases, with little code sharing. However, with data rates from the next generation of detectors reaching several 100 Gbit/s, and a typical dataset from an experiment being on the order of 10 TB, this is no longer feasible.
In this talk, we show a path from a world of ‘it works on my machine,’ with custom scripts and makefiles containing hardcoded paths, to fast and reliable software. We are also improving efficiency by reducing duplicated work. As an example, we take a closer look at the calibration code for the Jungfrau detector, where, using relatively standard techniques, we were able to reduce the runtime from around 2.5 hours to 3 minutes showing the value that a Research Software Engineer can bring.