SURGE: On the Potential of Large Language Models as General-Purpose Surrogate Code Executors

Abstract: Neural surrogate models have emerged as powerful and efficient tools in data mining. Meanwhile, LLMs have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in code-related tasks. We investigate a novel application: using LLMs as surrogate models for code execution prediction. Given LLMs' unique ability to understand and process diverse programs, they present a promising direction for building general-purpose surrogate models. To systematically investigate this capability, we introduce SURGE, a comprehensive benchmark with $1160$ problems covering $8$ key aspects: multi-language programming tasks, competition-level programming problems, repository-level code analysis, high-cost scientific computing, time-complexity-intensive algorithms, buggy code analysis, programs dependent on specific compilers or execution environments, and formal mathematical proof verification. Through extensive empirical analysis of $21$ open-source and proprietary LLMs, we examine scaling laws, data efficiency, and predictive accuracy. Our findings reveal important insights about the feasibility of LLMs as efficient surrogates for computational processes, with implications for automated software testing, program analysis, and computational resource optimization in data mining applications. Code and dataset are released at https://github.com/Imbernoulli/SURGE.