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StarCoder2: AI-Powered Code Generation by ServiceNow,

Hugging Face and NVIDIA

Introduction

In the dynamic world of technology, where innovation is the key to

success, a triumvirate of tech giants - ServiceNow, Hugging Face, and
NVIDIA - have joined forces to create a groundbreaking Large Language
Model (LLM) for code generation, known as StarCoder2. This model is
the fruit of a collaborative effort with the BigCode Community, a
consortium managed by ServiceNow, a pioneer in digital workflow
solutions, and Hugging Face, the most widely used open-source
platform. The development of StarCoder2 was driven by a shared vision
to revolutionize the field of code generation and set new benchmarks in
performance, transparency, and cost-effectiveness.

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credit - https://huggingface.co/bigcode/starcoder2-15b

What is StarCoder2?

StarCoder2 is not just another LLM; it’s a family of open-access models

for code generation that are designed to redefine the standards of
performance. It comes in three distinct sizes, each tailored to specific
needs: a 3-billion-parameter model developed by ServiceNow, a
7-billion-parameter model crafted by Hugging Face, and a
15-billion-parameter model engineered by NVIDIA. Each variant is a
testament to the collaborative spirit and technical prowess of the teams
involved.

Key Features of StarCoder2

StarCoder2 is packed with a host of unique features that set it apart from
its peers:

● It has been trained on over 80 programming languages, making it

versatile and adaptable.
● It employs Multi Query Attention, a cutting-edge technique that
enhances its performance.
● It boasts a context window of 8192 tokens, allowing it to handle
complex coding tasks.
● It has been trained using the Fill-in-the-Middle objective, a novel
approach that improves its code generation capabilities.

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Capabilities/Use Case of StarCoder2

StarCoder2 is not just about features; it’s about what you can do with
those features. Here are some of its unique capabilities:

● It excels at code completion, making coding faster and more

efficient.
● It offers advanced code summarization, helping developers
understand complex code.
● It can retrieve code snippets, saving developers time and effort.
● It can be further trained and embedded in enterprise applications,
making it a valuable tool for businesses.

Innovative Aspects of the Technology

StarCoder2 is more than a technological marvel; it’s a testament to the

power of innovation. It employs Grouped Query Attention (GQA), a
groundbreaking adaptation of existing technology.

GQA is a transformative technique that fuses multi-query and multi-head

attention for transformer models. It leverages an intermediate number of
key-value heads to accelerate decoder inference. This approach
empowers AI models to distribute attention across diverse query groups,
enabling more thorough processing and analysis. It delivers quality akin
to multi-head attention with speed comparable to multi-query attention.
This innovative attention mechanism equips StarCoder2 with the ability
to focus on different segments of the input sequence when making
predictions, offering a more adaptable and content-aware approach.

Another pioneering aspect of StarCoder2 is its implementation of a

sliding window attention mechanism. This attention pattern utilizes a
fixed-size window attention surrounding each token. Given a fixed
window size w, each token attends to 1/2 w tokens on each side. The
computation complexity of this pattern is O(n × w), where n is the input

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sequence length. This strategy enables StarCoder2 to prioritize pertinent

information within the input data, facilitating more effective processing
and analysis.

These innovations, coupled with a context window of 16,384 tokens and

a sliding window attention of 4,096 tokens, position StarCoder2 as a
trailblazer in the realm of code generation. It’s not just about generating
code; it’s about comprehending and interpreting code in a manner that
was previously unattainable. These innovative aspects of the technology
distinguish StarCoder2 from its predecessors and establish it as a
frontrunner in the field of AI-powered code generation.

Improvements over Predecessors

StarCoder2 has made significant strides over its predecessors, including

the original StarCoder and its variants, in terms of accuracy, efficiency,
and scalability. It introduces new capabilities and is trained on over 80
programming languages using the Fill-in-the-Middle objective on 1 trillion
tokens, offering high accuracy and efficiency. Its large context window
allows for scalability, enabling it to handle complex coding tasks.
Remarkably, the new 3-billion-parameter model of StarCoder2 matches
the performance of the original StarCoder 15-billion-parameter model.
This demonstrates how StarCoder2 has pushed the boundaries of
what’s possible in code generation, improving upon the capabilities of its
predecessors.

Performance Evaluation

The model has been evaluated on various benchmarks, achieving a

33.6% pass@1 score on the HumanEval benchmark, indicating its ability
to generate the correct solution as its first prediction for 33.6% of the
tasks.

Here are some key performance highlights across different benchmarks:

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● Code Completion (HumanEval, MBPP, and EvalPlus):

StarCoder2-3B is the best-performing small model on all datasets.
StarCoder2-7B ranks second among medium models, and
StarCoder2-15B is the best-performing large model.
● Code Completion (MultiPL-E): StarCoder2-3B performs the best
on 11 out of 18 programming languages among small models.
StarCoder2-7B outperforms CodeLlama-7B on most languages
among medium models. StarCoder2-15B excels on 16 out of 18
programming languages among large models.
● Code Completion (DS-1000): StarCoder2-3B is the
best-performing small model, StarCoder2-7B ranks second among
medium models, and StarCoder2-15B is the best-performing large
model.
● Code Fixing and Editing (HumanEvalFix): Using the Issue
prompt, StarCoder2-15B performs remarkably well as a base
model, outperforming the instruction-tuned CodeLlama models by
a significant margin and nearly matching the performance of the
instruction-tuned DeepSeekCoder models.
● Code Editing (CanItEdit): StarCoder2-3B ranks second behind
DeepSeekCoder-Instruct-1.3B among small models.
StarCoder2-7B and DeepSeekCoder-Instruct-6.7B each perform
best at descriptive and lazy instructions respectively among
medium models. StarCoder2-15B is the best-performing large
model.
● Math Reasoning (GSM8K): StableCode-3B is the best-performing
small model, with StarCoder2-3B in second place.
● Code Reasoning, Understanding, and Execution (CRUXEval):
StarCoder2-3B performs competitively with other small models.
StarCoder2-7B performs on par with CodeLlama-7B but lags
significantly behind DeepSeekCoder-6.7B. StarCoder2-15B is the
best-performing large model.

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● Fill-in-the-Middle: StarCoder2-3B performs as well as

StarCoderBase-15B on this benchmark. However, StarCoder2-15B
underperforms on this benchmark.

These results underscore the robust capabilities and competitive edge of

the StarCoder2 models in the realm of AI models. Further details can be
found in the research paper.

How to Access and Use this Model?

StarCoder2 is an open-source model. This means that developers are

free to use, modify, and distribute the model as per its licensing
structure. StarCoder2 is available for use in multiple ways:

All StarCoder2 models are available for download from Hugging Face.
You can experiment with these models directly from your browser or
through an API endpoint. For more detailed instructions on how to use
StarCoder2, you can visit the official Hugging Face page. All relevant
links are provided at the end of this article.

The StarCoder2 15B model is also available on NVIDIA AI Foundation

models. This allows developers to experiment with the model directly
from their browser or through an API endpoint.

Limitations

● Openness and Safety Risks: The open nature of the LLM

development process can lead to misuse due to the potential risks
associated with a model release.
● Privacy Compliance: Identifying and classifying different types of
Personal Identifiable Information (PII) for data processing,
transformations, and flows through code is challenging.
● Security Concerns: The model can be run or fine-tuned by any
actor with very low computing costs, potentially enabling malicious
use.

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● Societal Bias: The model can generate code that reflects societal
stereotypes, such as those related to gender, race, emotion, class,
and the structure of names.
● Representation Bias: The model's effectiveness may be limited
across different coding tasks and environments due to a higher
volume of data for popular programming languages like Python
and Java compared to niche languages like Haskell and Fortran.
● Traceability: Tracing software components using the Software
Heritage unique identifiers (SWHID) is challenging for most
downstream developers.
● Job Augmentation vs. Automation: While Code LLMs can
generate high-quality code, documentation, unit tests, text
summaries, automation workflows, and more, they may also pose
displacement risks for higher-paying and experience-intensive
jobs.

Future Plans and Solutions

There are several future plans and potential solutions to address these
limitations:

● Performance Improvement: Ongoing research aims to improve

the performance of Code LLMs on low-resource languages.
● Traceability Tools: There is a need for future development and
advancement of tools that make it easier to trace software
components.
● Privacy Compliance: Downstream users are advised to
implement additional PII scanning, filtering, cleansing, and
mitigation to ensure compliance with their intended use cases.

These plans highlight the ongoing efforts to address the limitations of the
StarCoder2 model and ensure its responsible and effective use in the
future.

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Conclusion

StarCoder2 as an AI model not only pushes the boundaries of code

generation but also sets new standards in performance and innovation.
Despite its limitations, the model’s unique features and capabilities make
it a game-changer in the realm of AI-powered code generation. Its
impact extends beyond just generating code; it’s about understanding
and interpreting code in a way that was previously unattainable. As we
move forward, it will be interesting to see how StarCoder2 continues to
evolve and shape the future of AI.

Source
blog link: https://huggingface.co/blog/starcoder2
15b starcoder: https://huggingface.co/bigcode/starcoder2-15b
Research paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17iGn3c-sYNiLyRSY-A85QOzgzGnGiVI3/view

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