Benchmark: compare math.pow and ** operator

Tests:

math.pow
var fooSet = new Set(); for(var i=0;i<53;i++) { fooSet.add(2**i - 1); } var other = [...fooSet];
**
var fooSet = new Set(); for(var i=0;i<53;i++) { fooSet.add(Math.pow(2, i) - 1); } var other = [...fooSet];

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
math.pow
**

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 130 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
math.pow	59061.3 Ops/sec
**	27752.8 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 benchmark and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares the performance of two ways to calculate `2^n - 1` for large values of `n`: using the exponentiation operator (`**`) and `Math.pow()`. The goal is to determine which method is faster and more efficient.

**Options Compared**

There are two options being compared:

1. **Exponentiation Operator (**)**: This operator is a shorthand way to raise a number to a power in JavaScript. For example, `2 ** 3` is equivalent to `Math.pow(2, 3)`.
2. **Math.pow()**: This function takes two arguments: the base and the exponent. It returns the result of raising the base to the power of the exponent.

**Pros and Cons**

Here are some pros and cons of each approach:

* **Exponentiation Operator (**)**
	+ Pros:
		- More concise and readable
		- Faster, since it's a built-in operator optimized for performance
	+ Cons:
		- May not be as intuitive or familiar to all developers
		- Can be less efficient for very large exponents due to cache issues
* **Math.pow()**
	+ Pros:
		- More explicit and understandable
		- Can be more efficient for very large exponents, since it's optimized for performance in this case
	+ Cons:
		- Less concise and may be less readable
		- May have slightly higher overhead due to the function call

**Library Used**

None of these options rely on external libraries. They are built-in JavaScript features.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

There isn't any special JavaScript feature or syntax being used in this benchmark. The focus is solely on comparing the performance of two different mathematical operations.

**Other Alternatives**

If you needed to calculate `2^n - 1` for large values of `n`, other alternatives could include:

* Using a library like `big.js` or `BigInt` (introduced in ECMAScript 2020) for arbitrary-precision arithmetic
* Implementing the calculation manually using loops and bit manipulation
* Using a specialized library or framework that provides optimized implementations of exponentiation and other mathematical operations

The benchmark results show that the exponentiation operator (`**`) is significantly faster than `Math.pow()` in this specific case, with an execution rate over 20x higher. However, it's essential to note that these results may vary depending on the specific use case, hardware, and JavaScript engine being used.

Related benchmarks:

compare math.pow and ** operator (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: math.pow vs **

Created: 7 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

math.pow

**

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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