Ring-Zero: Scaling Zero RL to a Trillion Parameters for Emergent Reasoning
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards without human-annotated data, often referred to as zero RL, has emerged as a powerful paradigm for eliciting chain-of-thought reasoning. However, due to computational constraints, existing studies are largely restricted to small models, leaving the training dynamics and emergent capabilities at a large scale unexplored. To meaningfully explore this frontier, we aim to elicit high-quality reasoning behaviors from the model. However, we find that naive scaling often suffers from poor readability, token redundancy, and a lack of adaptive reasoning depth. To address these challenges, we present a stable and efficient training pipeline, incorporating algorithmic and system optimizations such as clipped importance sampling, training-inference ratio correction, and mixed-precision control. Our experiments offer three key findings that validate the "bitter lesson" of scaling: (1) scaling to 1T parameters significantly enhances sample efficiency and performance ceilings; (2) the training process progresses sequentially through an initial discovery phase followed by a sharpening phase; and (3) the model spontaneously develops advanced cognitive behaviors, including anthropomorphism, structured formatting, self-verification, parallel reasoning, and context anxiety, rendering hand-crafted heuristics redundant. Evaluated on seven mathematical benchmarks, Ring-2.5-1T-Zero achieves competitive performance. Additionally, to assess CoT quality beyond final-answer correctness, we propose a structured evaluation framework across three dimensions: comprehensibility, reproducibility, and efficiency, where our model demonstrates clear advantages in producing structured and concise reasoning traces. By sharing our observed emergent phenomena, we hope to provide the community with deeper insights into scaling behaviors, particularly at the 1-trillion scale.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 35 of its 41 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Jul 2026.
Builds on
35 of 41 references.
Closest ancestors · 15
Same direction, newest first
- 2026mAceReason-Math: A Dataset of High-Quality Multilingual Math Problems Ready For RLVR11 Mar
- 2025Rethinking Sample Polarity in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards25 Dec
- 2025Every Step Evolves: Scaling Reinforcement Learning for Trillion-Scale Thinking Model21 Oct
- 2025Pass@k Training for Adaptively Balancing Exploration and Exploitation of Large Reasoning Models14 Aug
- 2025ProRL: Prolonged Reinforcement Learning Expands Reasoning Boundaries in Large Language Models30 May
- 2025AReaL: A Large-Scale Asynchronous Reinforcement Learning System for Language Reasoning30 May
- 2025AceReason-Nemotron: Advancing Math and Code Reasoning through Reinforcement Learning22 May
- 2025Does Reinforcement Learning Really Incentivize Reasoning Capacity in LLMs Beyond the Base Model?18 Apr
- 2025VAPO: Efficient and Reliable Reinforcement Learning for Advanced Reasoning Tasks7 Apr
- 2025Open-Reasoner-Zero: An Open Source Approach to Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning on the Base Model31 Mar
- 2025Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training: A Critical Perspective26 Mar
- 2025SimpleRL-Zoo: Investigating and Taming Zero Reinforcement Learning for Open Base Models in the Wild24 Mar
3 more
Other references · 20
- 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
- 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
- 2020Scaling Laws for Neural Language Modelscited by 6,586
- 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,374
- 2023A Survey of Large Language Modelscited by 2,576
- 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
- 2019Megatron-LM: Training Multi-Billion Parameter Language Models Using Model Parallelismcited by 1,868
- 2019ZeRO: Memory Optimizations Toward Training Trillion Parameter Modelscited by 1,301
- 2024DeepSeek-V2: A Strong, Economical, and Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Language Modelcited by 1,135
- 2025Group Sequence Policy Optimizationcited by 835
- 2021Efficient Large-Scale Language Model Training on GPU Clusters Using Megatron-LMcited by 632
8 more
- 2026Kimi K2.5: Visual Agentic Intelligencecited by 501
- 2023Ring Attention with Blockwise Transformers for Near-Infinite Contextcited by 457
- 2024MegaScale: Scaling Large Language Model Training to More Than 10,000 GPUscited by 112
- 2025Parallel-R1: Towards Parallel Thinking via Reinforcement Learningcited by 61
- 2024Lightning Attention-2: A Free Lunch for Handling Unlimited Sequence Lengths in Large Language Modelscited by 57
- 2025Incentivizing Dual Process Thinking for Efficient Large Language Model Reasoningcited by 21
- 2025A Survey on Parallel Reasoningcited by 11
- 2026RLVR Datasets and Where to Find Them: Tracing Data Lineage for Better Training Datacited by 1
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- 2025T1: Advancing Language Model Reasoning through Reinforcement Learning and Inference Scaling
- 2025The Markovian Thinker: Architecture-Agnostic Linear Scaling of Reasoning
- 2026Batched Contextual Reinforcement: A Task-Scaling Law for Efficient Reasoning
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