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.

Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser: Chrome 130

Operating system: Mac OS X 10.15.7

Device Platform: Desktop

Date tested: one month ago

Test name	Executions per second
Early Return	5925.2 Ops/sec
Compute Offset in Array	5953.0 Ops/sec
Math Min and Max Functions	5810.5 Ops/sec
Ternary Operators	5836.9 Ops/sec
If...else	5964.2 Ops/sec
Pure Arithmetic	5862.9 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); }

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.

Early Return

Compute Offset in Array

Math Min and Max Functions

Ternary Operators

If...else

Pure Arithmetic