Meta has released a new and enhanced version of their code generation tool, Code Llama 70B. This updated version can write code in various programming languages like Python, ++C, Java, and PHP, based on natural language requirements or existing code snippets.
Code Llama 70B is considered one of the top artificial intelligence models currently available for generating open-source code, setting a new standard in the field of code generation.
The ability to generate code is crucial for computer scientists, as it is one of their long-term goals, due to its potential to increase software development efficiency, ease, and creativity enhancement.
Code generation models, like Code Llama 70B, offer the capability to write or modify existing code and improve it using simple commands, or seamlessly translate code from one language to another.
Creating code instructions is not an easy task, as code instructions are specific and rigid, unlike natural language which is usually vague and flexible.
Code instructions adhere to strict rules and syntax to generate desired results and behaviors, often being complex and lengthy, requiring understanding and logical context for writing.
The process of creating code generation models requires a vast amount of data, computational power, and intelligence to tackle these challenges, where the crucial role of the new Meta model, Code Llama 70B, comes into play.
Code Llama 70B is a substantial and advanced linguistic model trained on 500 billion code-related tokens and associated data.
The new Meta model boasts a large screen containing 100,000 special characters, allowing it to process and create long and complex code instructions.
Code Llama 70B builds upon a large version of the general-purpose Llama 2 model, which includes 175 billion parameters.
Code Llama 70B is a specialized version of Llama 2, meticulously modified for code generation using self-attention technology. This technology enables it to understand relationships and dependencies between different parts of the code instructions.
Code Llama 70B features many capabilities, with the key one being CodeLlama-70B-Instruct, a feature that enables the model to comprehend instructions in natural language and generate code accordingly.
This feature achieved a rating of 67.8 points on the “HumanEval” scale, a standard dataset containing 164 code problems testing the functional and logical correctness of code generation models.
This result surpasses previous outcomes of leading open-source models such as CodeGen-16B-Mono and StarCoder, and can be compared to closed models’ results like GPT-4 (averaging 68.2 points) and Gemini Pro (averaging 69.4 points).
The CodeLlama-70B-Instruct feature enables handling a variety of tasks, such as data organization, search, classification, processing, and algorithm execution like binary search and Fibonacci.
Researchers and business users can download, use, and modify Code Llama 70B for free.
Meta also offers educational materials and programs on how to use and customize the model for various purposes and languages.
