Benchmark: JS BigInt big number performance v8

Tests:

BigInt
let n = 0n for (let i = 0n; i < 5n; i++) { n += i }
Number
let n = 0 for (let i = 0; i < 5; i++) { n += i }

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
BigInt
Number

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 18_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/131.0.6778.73 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Browser/OS: Chrome Mobile iOS 131 on iOS 18.0.1

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
BigInt	2217244.0 Ops/sec
Number	147968112.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

I'd be happy to explain the test being performed in this benchmark.

**Benchmark Definition**

The test compares the performance of two approaches for handling large numbers: `Number` and `BigInt`.

**Options Compared**

The two options being compared are:

1. **Number**: This is a built-in JavaScript type that represents a decimal number with a fixed precision, usually 53 bits in modern browsers. However, it can cause performance issues when dealing with very large numbers due to limitations in its arithmetic operations.
2. **BigInt**: This is a relatively new addition to the ECMAScript standard (introduced in ES2020) designed specifically for handling arbitrarily large integers. It provides support for arbitrary-precision arithmetic and is generally more efficient than `Number` for large numbers.

**Pros and Cons**

Using `Number`:

* Pros:
	+ Smaller memory footprint
	+ Can be faster for certain operations (e.g., basic arithmetic)
* Cons:
	+ Can cause performance issues with very large numbers due to integer overflows and limitations in arithmetic operations.
	+ May not support all mathematical operations (e.g., modular exponentiation).

Using `BigInt`:

* Pros:
	+ Designed specifically for handling arbitrarily large integers, providing efficient arithmetic operations.
	+ Supports a wider range of mathematical operations.
* Cons:
	+ Larger memory footprint
	+ Can be slower than `Number` for certain operations

**Library and Purpose**

In this benchmark, there is no library explicitly mentioned. However, it's worth noting that the `BigInt` type relies on the `BigInt64Array` (or `BigUint64Array` for unsigned integers) to perform arithmetic operations.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntax being tested in this benchmark. The code snippets provided only demonstrate simple arithmetic operations with large numbers.

**Other Alternatives**

If you need to handle very large numbers, other alternatives could include:

1. **GMP (Gaussian Multiplication-Modular) libraries**: These libraries provide support for arbitrary-precision arithmetic and can be used in conjunction with JavaScript.
2. **Library-based solutions**: Libraries like `mathjs` or `decimal.js` provide support for decimal arithmetic and may offer more control over performance than the built-in `Number` and `BigInt` types.

Keep in mind that these alternatives might require more code and setup, but can provide more flexibility and control over performance.

Let me know if you have any further questions!

Related benchmarks:

JS BigInt big number performance v8 (version: 0)

Compare Number vs BigInt for big numbers

Comparing performance of: BigInt vs Number

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

BigInt

Number

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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