Benchmark: Math.pow() vs exponentiation operator

Script Preparation code:

var a = Math.random();
var b = Math.random();

Tests:

Math.pow()
Math.pow(a, b);
Exponentiation operator
a ** b;

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Math.pow()
Exponentiation operator

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one month ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/134.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 134 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Math.pow()	185687120.0 Ops/sec
Exponentiation operator	173265936.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gemma2:9b, generated 6 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

This benchmark tests the performance of two ways to calculate exponentiation in JavaScript:

* **`Math.pow(a, b)`:** This uses the built-in `Math.pow()` function from JavaScript's Math object. 
* **`a ** b;`:** This uses the exponentiation operator (**), introduced in ES2016 (ECMAScript 2016).

**What's being compared?**

The benchmark measures how many times each method can calculate the result of `a ^ b` per second. It does this by repeatedly running both calculations and timing them.

**Pros and Cons:**

* **`Math.pow()`:**
    * **Pro:** More widely supported in older browsers as it's a standard function. 
    * **Con:** Might be slightly slower than the exponentiation operator in modern JavaScript engines due to the overhead of calling a separate function.
* **`a ** b;`:**
    * **Pro:** Generally faster because it leverages native compiler optimizations and is considered more concise syntax.
    * **Con:**  Only available in modern browsers that support ES2016 or later.

**Other Considerations:**

* **Browser Differences:** JavaScript performance can vary significantly between different browsers, even within the same engine version. The benchmark results reflect the performance on a specific browser (Chrome 111).
* **Hardware and Software:** Factors like CPU speed, RAM, operating system, and other running processes can also affect benchmark results.

**Alternatives:**

While less common, there are alternative ways to calculate exponentiation in JavaScript:

* **Iterative loops:** You could write your own loop-based algorithm to perform repeated multiplication. This might be educational but is generally less efficient than the built-in methods or operator.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Related benchmarks:

Math.pow() vs exponentiation operator (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Math.pow() vs Exponentiation operator

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Math.pow()

Exponentiation operator

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gemma2:9b, generated 6 months ago):