Introduction

New LLM was developed by Hugging Face and ServiceNow as part of

the BigCode project, which is an open scientific collaboration aimed at
responsibly developing large language models for code. So, the creator
and contributor of this project is Big Code. Hugging Face and
ServiceNow jointly oversee BigCode, which has brought together over
600 members from a wide range of academic institutions and industry
labs.

What is StarCoder LLM?

Star Coder LLM is a new language model designed specifically for

programming languages. StarCoder LLM is a language model for code
that has been trained on The Stack (v1.2), permissive data in over 80
programming languages. Its training data even incorporates text
extracted from GitHub issues and commits and from notebooks.
StarCoder LLM is a state-of-the-art LLM that matches the performance
of GPT-4.
Key Features of LLM

● The model has been trained over 80 programming languages and

is being made for developers as well as programmers to write
code.
● The model has around 15 billion parameter models which means
they have a lot of computational power as well as have been
trained on a vast amount of data and is designed to help
developers write better code faster and more efficiently.
● It has the ability to process more input than any other open LLM.
● It has a user-friendly interface.

How Star Coder LLM Works?

Star Coder LLM uses techniques such as multi-curry attention which

allows it to understand the context of the code and provide relevant
suggestions. The model has a large content window of 8192 tokens
which means that it analyses a lot of code at once to provide an accurate
suggestion of what you should be able to accomplish. The LM was
trained using a fill in the middle objective on one trillion tokens, meaning
that it has been trained to predict the missing code of a given
programming language. StarCoder LLM works by using deep learning
algorithms to recognize, summarise, translate, predict, and generate
code based on knowledge gained from massive datasets. It is trained on
permissive data and can process more input than any other open LLM.

Use Cases for Star Coder LLM

● Star Coder LLM can be used to write better code and provide
accurate suggestions for coding problems.
● The LM can translate code to text, get text to code, translate code
to a different code, and do text to text.
● The format of the interaction is between a human who gives the
instruction (prompt) and an assistant which is the application that
answers it.
Features of the Tool

● The tool's main feature is code completion, which suggests code

completions and partial code snippets based on the content and
syntax of the code.
● It can also generate code from natural language prompts, making
it useful for beginners who are not familiar with coding.
● The tool can detect bugs in different types of codes, reducing the
time and effort required to identify and fix them.
● It has different types of tech assistance that provide suggestions
and improvements for your code.
● The tool can translate any type of code from one programming
language to another using data sets extracted from 80 different
programming languages.

Programming Languages Used

The 86 programming languages used by the LM, including popular ones

like Python, Java, C++, JavaScript as well as less common ones like
Lisp, Perl and Fortran.

Debug Assistants for Code Generation

Different debug assistants can be used to generate optimised code and

assist in debugging. These assistants utilise various programming
languages to provide prompts and assist in debugging. The research
paper linked in the description provides more information on these
debug assistants.

Programming Languages for Optimised Code Generation

There are many programming languages that are most commonly used
for generating optimised code. CPP, Java, and Python are some of the
most commonly used programming languages for generating optimized
code. Smaller programming languages do not have as much emphasis
or impact on data extraction. A graph shown below to illustrate this point.
StarCoder vs StartCoderBase

StarCoderBase, a model of greater specialisation, emerged from the

process of fine-tuning the StarCoder model, which is its base.
Essentially, the aim of this was to enhance the StarCoder model's
Python code generation capabilities. To achieve this, the StarCoderBase
model underwent an intensive training regimen, consisting of 35B
Python tokens.

Upon completion of this process, the resulting model, known as

StarCoder, was born. It boasts an impressive parameter count of 15.5B,
making it a formidable force in the realm of code generation. Moreover,
the StarCoder model has been carefully trained on The Stack (v1.2), a
vast dataset incorporating 80 programming languages.
All in all, the StarCoderBase model has demonstrated its remarkable
capacity to build upon its base model's strengths, significantly boosting
its performance in generating top-quality Python code.

Indeed, the StarCoder model represents a major leap forward in the field
of natural language processing, with its impressive perplexity and
burstiness characteristics making it a standout choice for any discerning
user seeking the best possible results.
How to access Starcode LLM?

There are different ways to access StarCoder LLM. One way is to

integrate the model into a code editor or development environment.
Another way is to use the VSCode plugin, which is a useful complement
to conversing with StarCoder while developing software. Users can also
access StarCoder LLM through the Hugging Face website. It is available
for free and can be accessed through the Hugging Face website. The
links for the Hugging Face website and other Starcoder related
resources can be found in the ‘source’ section at the end of this article.

Limitations

The StarCoder LLM, a large language model that shares limitations with
other models of its type. These limitations include the potential for
generating erroneous, rude, deceptive, ageist, sexist, or stereotypically
reinforcing information.

The StarCoder LLM is available for use under the OpenRAIL-M license,
which imposes legally binding restrictions on its usage and modification.
It is important to note that the efficacy and limitations of code LLMs on
different natural languages require further research to expand the
applicability of these models.

Moreover, the licence associated with StarCoder LLM contains use-case

constraints, which differs from traditional open-source software that is
released without such limitations in the English language. As such, it is
essential to consider the legal and ethical implications of utilising
machine-generated text for various purposes.

Conclusion

With its ability to generate high-quality code and reduce the time spent
on debugging and searching for the right code, StarCoder LLM is a
valuable tool for developers looking to streamline their workflow and
increase productivity.
source
Paper - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cN-b9GnWtHzQRoE7M7gAEyivY0kl4BYs/view
GitHub Repo - https://github.com/bigcode-project/starcoder
demo - https://huggingface.co/spaces/bigcode/bigcode-playground
model - https://huggingface.co/bigcode/starcoderbase

If you would like to read more articles with the latest updates on AI chatbots, open source large language models, and many
more topics, please visit my blog. Click here to access it.