Run results for: Finding the Fastest Clamp

Generates a list of random numbers between -1.5 and +1.5 then loops through the list with each function. Functions that uses branches should have more variance in speed since they can potentially exit early. Functions that use arithmetic should have little to no variance but do more computation.

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Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.0 Safari/605.1.15

Browser: Safari 17

Operating system: Linux

Device Platform: Desktop

Date tested: one year ago

Early Return

7K/s

If...else

7K/s

Compute Offset in Array

7K/s

Ternary Operators

7K/s

Pure Arithmetic

6K/s

Math Min and Max Functions

4K/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ Early Return	7,395 Ops/sec
If...else	7,220 Ops/sec
Compute Offset in Array	7,174 Ops/sec
Ternary Operators	7,099 Ops/sec
Pure Arithmetic	6,350 Ops/sec
Math Min and Max Functions	3,683 Ops/sec

Script Preparation code:

var numbers = new Array(1000);
var results = new Array(1000);

for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++);
{
  numbers[i] = (Math.random() - 0.5) * 3;
}

function clamp(min, value, max) {
	if (value >= max)
		return max;
	if (value <= min)
		return min;
	return value;
}

function clamp2(min, value, max) {
	return [min, value, max][1 + (value >= max) - (value <= min)];
}

function clamp3(min, value, max) {
	return Math.max(value, Math.min(value, max));
}

function clamp4(min, value, max) {
    return value <= min ? min : (value >= max ? max : value);
}

function clamp5(min, value, max) {
	if (value >= max)
		return max;
	else if (value <= min)
		return min;
	else
		return value;
}

function clamp6(min, value, max) {
	return  (value >= max) * (max - value) +
			(value <= min) * (min - value) +
			value;
}

Tests:

Early Return
for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) { results[i] = clamp(0, numbers[i], 1.0); }
Compute Offset in Array
for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) { results[i] = clamp2(0, numbers[i], 1.0); }
Math Min and Max Functions
for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) { results[i] = clamp3(0, numbers[i], 1.0); }
Ternary Operators
for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) { results[i] = clamp4(0, numbers[i], 1.0); }
If...else
for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) { results[i] = clamp5(0, numbers[i], 1.0); }
Pure Arithmetic
for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) { results[i] = clamp6(0, numbers[i], 1.0); }