Benchmark: Math pow and double asterisk with floats

Tests:

**
56.12**3.4
Math.pow
Math.pow(56.12, 3.4);

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: 11 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/137.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/137.0.0.0

Browser/OS: Chrome 137 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
**	163571904.0 Ops/sec
Math.pow	152333056.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

I'd be happy to help explain the provided JavaScript microbenchmark on MeasureThat.net.

**Overview**

The benchmark measures the performance of two different approaches for calculating exponentiation with floating-point numbers in JavaScript: using the `**` operator (also known as exponentiation by squaring) and using the `Math.pow()` function.

**Options Compared**

Two options are compared:

1. **Exponentiation by Squaring (`**` operator)**: This is a mathematical technique for efficiently calculating exponentiation, which avoids the need to repeatedly multiply or divide numbers. In JavaScript, this is implemented using the `**` operator.
2. **Math.pow() function**: This is a built-in JavaScript function that calculates the power of a number.

**Pros and Cons**

Here are some pros and cons of each approach:

* **Exponentiation by Squaring (`**` operator)`**:
	+ Pros: Fast, lightweight, and simple to implement.
	+ Cons: May not be as accurate for large exponentiations due to floating-point precision issues.
* **Math.pow() function**:
	+ Pros: Accurate for all exponentiations, including large ones. However, it may be slower than the `**` operator.
	+ Cons: Heavier and more complex than the `**` operator.

In general, if you need a simple, fast way to calculate small to medium-sized exponentiations with floating-point numbers, the `**` operator is a good choice. For larger or more precise calculations, the `Math.pow()` function may be a better option.

**Library Usage**

There is no library usage in this benchmark.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax**

The benchmark uses JavaScript's exponentiation by squaring feature (`**` operator), which is a built-in feature of the language. No special syntax or features are used in this benchmark.

**Alternative Approaches**

Other approaches for calculating exponentiation include:

* **Binary Exponentiation**: This method uses repeated multiplication and division to calculate exponentiations, similar to the `**` operator but with more steps.
* **Logarithmic Exponentiation**: This method uses logarithms to reduce the size of the numbers being calculated, which can be faster for large exponentiations.

These alternative approaches are typically implemented using a library or a custom implementation in JavaScript.

Related benchmarks:

Math pow and double asterisk with floats (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: ** vs Math.pow

Created: 5 years ago by: Registered User

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):