This work targets the emerging use of software component technology for high-performance scientific parallel and distributed computing. While component software engineering will benefit the construction of complex science applications, its use presents several challenges to performance optimization. A component application is composed of a set of components, thus, application performance depends on the interaction (possibly non-linear) of the component set. Furthermore, a component is a "binary unit of composition" and the only information users have is the interface the component provides to the outside world. An interface for component performance measurement and query is presented to address optimization issues. We describe the performance component design and an example demonstrating its use for runtime performance tuning.