Tuning Models of Code with Compiler-Generated Reinforcement Learning Feedback

Large Language Models (LLMs) pre-trained on code have recently emerged as the dominant approach to program synthesis. However, the code that these models produce can violate basic language-level invariants, leading to lower performance in downstream tasks. We address this issue through an approach, called RLCF, that further trains a pre-trained LLM using feedback from a code compiler. RLCF views the LLM as an RL agent that generates code step by step and receives: (i) compiler-derived feedback on whether the code it generates passes a set of correctness checks; and (ii) feedback from a different LLM on whether the generated code is similar to a set of reference programs in the training corpus. Together, these feedback mechanisms help the generated code remain within the target distribution while passing all static correctness checks. RLCF is model- and language-agnostic. We empirically evaluate it on the MBJP and MathQA tasks for Java. Our experiments show that RLCF significantly raises the odds that an LLM-generated program compiles, is executable, and produces the right output on tests, often allowing LLMs to match the performance of 2x-8x larger LLMs.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

PlinyCompute: A Platform for High-Performance, Distributed, Data-Intensive Tool Development

This paper describes PlinyCompute, a system for development of high-performance, data-intensive, distributed computing tools and libraries. In the large, PlinyCompute presents the programmer with a very high-level, declarative interface, relying on automatic, relational-database style optimization to figure out how to stage distributed computations. However, in the small, PlinyCompute presents the capable systems programmer with a persistent object data model and API (the "PC object model") and associated memory management system that has been designed from the ground-up for high performance, distributed, data-intensive computing. This contrasts with most other Big Data systems, which are constructed on top of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and hence must at least partially cede performance-critical concerns such as memory management (including layout and de/allocation) and virtual method/function dispatch to the JVM. This hybrid approach---declarative in the large, trusting the programmer's ability to utilize PC object model efficiently in the small---results in a system that is ideal for the development of reusable, data-intensive tools and libraries. Through extensive benchmarking, we show that implementing complex objects manipulation and non-trivial, library-style computations on top of PlinyCompute can result in a speedup of 2x to more than 50x or more compared to equivalent implementations on Spark.Comment: 48 pages, including references and Appendi

Auto-Differentiation of Relational Computations for Very Large Scale Machine Learning

The relational data model was designed to facilitate large-scale data management and analytics. We consider the problem of how to differentiate computations expressed relationally. We show experimentally that a relational engine running an auto-differentiated relational algorithm can easily scale to very large datasets, and is competitive with state-of-the-art, special-purpose systems for large-scale distributed machine learning.Comment: ICML 202