Skip to content

Rethinking Code Performance Benchmarks for LLMs

Jul 2026 · arXiv.org · Vol abs/2607.07619 · 0 citations · 100 references
Computer Science

TL;DR

An LLM-based multi-agent framework to generate performance-oriented tests that expose runtime differences more effectively than the original tests is proposed, which uses three separate agents to generate, diagnose, and repair deterministic tests that preserve functional correctness while better exposing performance differences.

Abstract

Many function-level performance benchmarks have been proposed to evaluate whether large language models (LLMs) can generate efficient programs. However, results on these benchmarks often show that LLM-generated implementations have little or no execution-time difference from canonical solutions. In this paper, we revisit four popular benchmarks: EffiBench, Enamel, EvalPerf, and Mercury. We evaluate 1,538 tasks under more rigorous setting by running each task 30 times and assessing the runtime differences between the canonical solutions and benchmark-provided performant implementations with statistical testing. With the benchmark-provided test suites, only 6.11% of the performant implementations are significantly faster than the canonical solutions. In a manual analysis of 308 non-significant tasks, 99 performant implementations contain no meaningful performance change, while 209 contain potential performance improvements that are not exposed by the original tests. These results suggest that the main limitation is not only the evaluation method, but also the limited sufficiency of the benchmark-provided performance tests. To address this limitation, we propose an LLM-based multi-agent framework to generate performance-oriented tests that expose runtime differences more effectively than the original tests. The framework uses three separate agents to generate, diagnose, and repair deterministic tests that preserve functional correctness while better exposing performance differences. Across 1,345 benchmark tasks for which the original tests found no significant performance difference, tests generated by our framework with DeepSeek-v3.1 and GPT-4o reveal statistically significant improvements in 24.01% and 25.43% of the tasks, respectively, outperforming the SOTA LLM-based performance test generation method.

View source

Similar papers

#small language model Preprint Sep 2026

Code Transformation Rule Synthesis using LLMs: Potential and Limits

Due to their black-box nature, LLMs suffer from limited explain- ability and a lack of determinism. Their usage cost can also rise, particularly with repetitive tasks on large codebases. To mitigate this, we conduct a novel empirical study targeting three domain- specific languages for transformation rules, namely Comby, GritQL, and Ast-Grep. We evaluate three LLMs (GPT-5.4, GPT-oss-120B, and Llama3.1-8B) on six diverse datasets covering four software- evolution tasks: API misuse correction, program repair, API migra- tion, and language version migration. Our results provide evidence that transformation rule synthesis moves beyond proof-of-concept with strong frontier models. GPT-5.4 achieves consistently high rule applicability rates and produces transformations closest to the ground truth across most benchmarks. Smaller and open-weight GPT-oss-120B and Llama3.1-8B models remain effective for simpler, localized changes but struggle with complex migration scenarios. We also observe non-negligible generalizability through the usage of meta-variables and through a high reuse score in the first quartile of many datasets. Finally, when compared to the anti-unification algorithm, LLMs outperform it in correctness, but underperform in rule applicability. Overall, our results show great potential for LLMs to generate sound, correct, generalizable, and reusable rules.

Axel Allain, Aymeric Blot, D. Khelladi et al. · 1 citation
#software testing Preprint Aug 2026

Benchmarking the Titans: A Multi-Dimensional Empirical Evaluation of LLM Code Generation Quality in the .NET Ecosystem

An automated, multi-dimensional evaluation framework for C# code generation, applying it to four state-of-the-art LLMs: GPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok is presented and a substantial gap between correctness and quality attributes is revealed.

Seyed Mohammad Mahdi Ghalandarian, Majid Bazargani, Masoumeh Taromirad · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Sep 2026

PerfReasoning: How Well Do LLMs Reason on Hardware Performance?

Performance modeling is central to hardware design and software optimization, yet constructing these models requires structured reasoning about computation, data reuse, storage, and movement. We introduce PerfReasoning, a benchmark that evaluates LLMs both as direct performance reasoners and as generators of analytical performance-model code. Given workload, architecture, and mapping specifications, models compare mappings and predict off-chip traffic and buffer requirements. The strongest closed-source models exceed 90% on reasoning-based Q&A, and the best open-weight model reaches 82.4%. However, model construction is substantially harder: while GPT-5.6 Sol exceeds 80% pass rate, all other model configurations average below 15% and vary markedly across runs. Task-specific RL raises a 4B model's mapping-reasoning accuracy by 15.7 points, whereas feedback-free multi-round self-revision prompting is not reliably effective. PerfReasoning exposes the gap between plausible architectural reasoning and reliable performance-model construction. We will publicly release the benchmark to support reproducible evaluation and track future progress.

Da Zhao, K. Sankaralingam, Christos Kozyrakis et al. · 0 citations
Preprint Jul 2026

Benchmarking LLMs on File System Design and Implementation

This study discloses the model efficiency for different tasks, causes of failed fs tasks, and techniques for mitigating LLM failures, and will open source \phi-Bench to facilitate public research on using LLMs for fs development.

Yu Xue, Daixuan Li, Jian Huang · 0 citations

We use cookies to run the site and, with your consent, for analytics and to show ads. See our Cookie Policy.