Exploring the Reasoning Depth of Small Language Models in Software Architecture: A Multidimensional Evaluation Framework Towards Software Engineering 2.0

Abstract: In the era of "Software Engineering 2.0" (SE 2.0), where intelligent agents collaborate with human engineers, Generative AI is advancing beyond code generation into Software Architecture (SA). While LLMs demonstrate superior capabilities, computational costs and data privacy concerns drive interest in Small LLMs (SLMs) with fewer than 7 billion parameters. However, the reasoning limits of these resource-constrained models remain unexplored. This study benchmarks 10 state-of-the-art SLMs on Architectural Decision Records generation, introducing a multi-dimensional framework evaluating Technical Compliance and Semantic Diversity. Our empirical results reveal a significant reasoning gap: models above the 3B-parameter threshold demonstrate robust zero-shot capabilities, while sub-2B models show the strongest BERTScore gains from Fine-Tuning, though compliance improvements are not guaranteed. Contrary to assumptions regarding context saturation, Few-Shot prompting serves as a highly effective calibration mechanism for select mid-sized models with short context windows. Furthermore, high semantic diversity in off-the-shelf small models often correlates with hallucination rather than productive exploration. These findings establish a rigorous baseline for deploying sustainable, locally hosted architectural assistants.