Efficient Text-to-Code Retrieval with Cascaded Fast and Slow Transformer Models
The goal of semantic code search or text-to-code search is to retrieve a semantically relevant code snippet from an existing code database using a natural language query. Existing approaches are neither effective nor efficient enough for a practical semantic code search system. In this paper, we propose an efficient and accurate text-to-code search framework with cascaded fast and slow models, in which a fast transformer encoder model is learned to optimize a scalable index for fast retrieval followed by learning a slow classification-based re-ranking model to improve the accuracy of the top K results from the fast retrieval. To further reduce the high memory cost of deploying two separate models in practice, we propose to jointly train the fast and slow model based on a single transformer encoder with shared parameters. Empirically our cascaded method is not only efficient and scalable, but also achieves state-of-the-art results with an average mean reciprocal ranking (MRR) score of 0.7795 (across 6 programming languages) on the CodeSearchNet benchmark as opposed to the prior state-of-the-art result of 0.740 MRR. Our codebase will be made publicly available.
Tue 5 DecDisplayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change
16:00 - 18:00 | Code Search and Text to CodeResearch Papers / Industry Papers / Journal First / Demonstrations at Golden Gate A Chair(s): Miryung Kim University of California at Los Angeles, USA | ||
16:00 15mTalk | [Remote] Self-Supervised Query Reformulation for Code Search Research Papers Yuetian Mao Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Chengcheng Wan East China Normal University, Yuze Jiang Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xiaodong Gu Shanghai Jiao Tong University Media Attached | ||
16:15 15mTalk | [Remote] Natural Language to Code: How Far are We? Research Papers Shangwen Wang National University of Defense Technology, Mingyang Geng National University of Defense Technology, Bo Lin National University of Defense Technology, Zhensu Sun Singapore Management University, Ming Wen Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Yepang Liu Southern University of Science and Technology, Li Li Beihang University, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé University of Luxembourg, Xiaoguang Mao National University of Defense Technology DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
16:30 15mTalk | [Remote] xASTNN: Improved Code Representations for Industrial Practice Industry Papers Zhiwei Xu Tsinghua University, Min Zhou Tsinghua University, Xibin Zhao Tsinghua University, Yang Chen Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Xi Cheng VMware, Hongyu Zhang Chongqing University DOI Media Attached | ||
16:45 7mTalk | [Remote] On the Dual Nature of Necessity in Use of Rust Unsafe Code Industry Papers Yuchen Zhang New York University, USA, Ashish Kundu Cisco Research, Georgios Portokalidis Stevens Institute of Technology, Jun Xu The University of Utah DOI Media Attached | ||
16:53 7mTalk | On Using Information Retrieval to Recommend Machine Learning Good Practices for Software Engineers Demonstrations Laura Cabra-Acela Universidad de Los Andes, Anamaria Mojica-Hanke University of Passau, Universidad de Los Andes, Mario Linares-Vásquez Universidad de los Andes, Steffen Herbold University of Passau Media Attached | ||
17:00 15mTalk | MultiPL-E: A Scalable and Polyglot Approach to Benchmarking Neural Code Generation Journal First Federico Cassano Northeastern University, John Gouwar Northeastern University, Daniel Nguyen Hannover High School, Sydney Nguyen Wellesley College, Luna Phipps-Costin Northeastern University, Donald Pinckney Northeastern University, Ming-Ho Yee Northeastern University, Yangtian Zi Northeastern University, Carolyn Jane Anderson Wellesley College, Molly Feldman Oberlin College, Arjun Guha Northeastern University and Roblox, Michael Greenberg Stevens Institute of Technology, Abhinav Jangda Microsoft Research Link to publication Media Attached | ||
17:15 15mTalk | NCQ: Code reuse support for Node.js developers Journal First Brittany Reid The University of Adelaide, Marcelo d'Amorim North Carolina State University, Markus Wagner Monash University, Australia, Christoph Treude University of Melbourne Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
17:30 15mTalk | Efficient Text-to-Code Retrieval with Cascaded Fast and Slow Transformer Models Research Papers Akhilesh Deepak Gotmare Salesforce Research, Junnan Li Salesforce Research, Shafiq Joty Salesforce Research, Steven C.H. Hoi Salesforce Research Asia Media Attached | ||
17:45 15mTalk | PEM: Representing Binary Program Semantics for Similarity Analysis via A Probabilistic Execution Model Research Papers Xiangzhe Xu Purdue University, Zhou Xuan , Shiwei Feng Purdue University, Siyuan Cheng Purdue University, Yapeng Ye Purdue University, Qingkai Shi The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guanhong Tao Purdue University, Le Yu , Zhuo Zhang Purdue University, Xiangyu Zhang Purdue University Media Attached | ||