Benchmark: Crypto.randomUUID() vs new Date().getTime()

Script Preparation code:

var dates = Array.from({length: 200}, () => new Date())

Tests:

date.getTime()
dates.map(date => date.getTime())
crypto.randomUUID()
dates.map(() => crypto.randomUUID())

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 38 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 38 runs

date.getTime()

2.1M/s

crypto.randomUUID()

4K/s

Fastest: date.getTime() (496.6x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ date.getTime(): 2,077,756 ops/sec
• crypto.randomUUID(): 4,184 ops/sec

Results show median performance across all community submissions. Run this benchmark yourself to verify on your device.

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
date.getTime()
crypto.randomUUID()

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 7 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/144.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 144 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

date.getTime()

3.4M/s

crypto.randomUUID()

5K/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ date.getTime()	3,447,517 Ops/sec
crypto.randomUUID()	4,568 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided JSON data and explain what is tested, compared, and other considerations.

**Benchmark Definition**

The test compares two different approaches to generating unique identifiers:

1. `new Date().getTime()` : This method generates a timestamp in milliseconds since the Unix epoch (January 1, 1970). The idea behind this approach is that the time component of the date will change, making it unique.
2. `crypto.randomUUID()` : This function generates a random UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) string. The purpose of using a UUID is to ensure uniqueness across different systems and devices.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark compares the execution speed of these two approaches:

* `new Date().getTime()`: This approach uses the built-in JavaScript date object, which has a constant overhead due to its inherent complexity.
* `crypto.randomUUID()`: This approach relies on the `crypto` module, which is used for generating cryptographically secure random numbers. The UUID generation process involves multiple iterations and hashing steps.

**Pros and Cons**

* **new Date().getTime()**:
	+ Pros: Simple and widely supported implementation.
	+ Cons: Limited uniqueness due to the time component being constant (in this case, the same day).
	+ Additional overhead: The date object has a non-negligible overhead due to its internal complexity.
* `crypto.randomUUID()` :
	+ Pros: High uniqueness and low probability of collisions.
	+ Cons: Requires additional imports and may be slower than the simple timestamp approach.

**Library and Purpose**

The `crypto` module is part of Node.js, and it provides cryptographic functions. In this benchmark, `crypto.randomUUID()` is used to generate a random UUID string, which serves as an alternative identifier to the timestamp-based approach.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax**

There are no specific JavaScript features or syntax mentioned in the provided JSON data that would require special attention or explanation.

**Other Considerations**

* The benchmark uses a fixed array size of 200 elements for testing, which may not be representative of real-world scenarios.
* The test does not account for potential caching or optimization by the browser or Node.js runtime.
* There are no iterations or repetitions of the tests, which might limit the accuracy of the results.

**Alternatives**

Other alternatives for generating unique identifiers include:

1. `Math.random()` with a large range (e.g., 2^32-1) to generate pseudo-random numbers.
2. Using a cryptographic hash function like SHA-256 or SHA-512.
3. Utilizing a dedicated library like `uuid`, which provides a simple and robust UUID generation mechanism.

In conclusion, the provided benchmark tests the performance difference between two approaches for generating unique identifiers: the timestamp-based approach using `new Date().getTime()` and the random UUID approach using `crypto.randomUUID()`. The results provide insight into the relative execution speed of these approaches in JavaScript.

Crypto.randomUUID() vs new Date().getTime() (version: 0) Benchmark.js

In real world example new Date() will be unique date. In this case its same days

Comparing performance of: `date.getTime() vs crypto.randomUUID()`

Created: 3 years ago by: Registered User

Go to the latest result

date.getTime()

crypto.randomUUID()

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 38 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 38 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

Crypto.randomUUID() vs new Date().getTime() (version: 0) Benchmark.js

In real world example new Date() will be unique date. In this case its same days

Comparing performance of: date.getTime() vs crypto.randomUUID()

Created: 3 years ago by: Registered User

Go to the latest result

date.getTime()

crypto.randomUUID()

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 38 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 38 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `date.getTime() vs crypto.randomUUID()`