Why is it faster to process sorted array than an unsorted array ? - GeeksforGeeks

11 Jul, 2017
Here is a C++ code that illustrates that sorting the data miraculously makes the code faster than the unsorted version. Let’s try out a sample C++ program to understand the problem statement better.
// CPP program to demonstrate processing// time of sorted and unsorted array#include <iostream>#include <algorithm>#include <ctime>using namespace std;  const int N = 100001;  int main(){    int arr[N];      // Assign random values to array    for (int i=0; i<N; i++)        arr[i] = rand()%N;      // for loop for unsorted array    int count = 0;    double start = clock();    for (int i=0; i<N; i++)        if (arr[i] < N/2)            count++;      double end = clock();    cout << "Time for unsorted array :: "         << ((end - start)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC)         << endl;    sort(arr, arr+N);      // for loop for sorted array    count = 0;    start = clock();      for (int i=0; i<N; i++)        if (arr[i] < N/2)            count++;      end = clock();    cout << "Time for sorted array :: "         << ((end - start)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC)         << endl;      return 0;}
Output :
Execution 1:
Time for unsorted array :: 0.00108
Time for sorted array :: 0.00053

Execution 2:
Time for unsorted array :: 0.001101
Time for sorted array :: 0.000593

Execution 3:
Time for unsorted array :: 0.0011
Time for sorted array :: 0.000418

Observe that time taken for processing a sorted array is less as compared to unsorted array. The reason for this optimisation for sorted array is branch prediction.
What is branch prediction ?In computer architecture, branch prediction means determining whether a conditional branch(jump) in the instruction flow of a program is likely to be taken or not.All the pipelined processors do branch prediction in some form, because they must guess the address of the next instruction to fetch before the current instruction has been executed.
How branch prediction in applicable on above case ?
The if condition checks that arr[i] < 5000, but if you observe in case of sorted array, after passing the number 5000 the condition is always false, and before that it is always true, compiler optimises the code here and skips the if condition which is referred as branch prediction.
Case 1 : Sorted array
	T = if condition true
	F = if condition false
	arr[] = {0,1,2,3,4,5,6, .... , 4999,5000,5001, ... , 100000}
            {T,T,T,T,T,T,T, .... , T,    F,   F,   ... ,    F  }	

We can observe that it is very easy to predict the branch in sorted array, as the sequence is TTTTTTTTTTTT.........FFFFFFFFFFFFF
Case 2 : Unsorted array
	T = if condition true
	F = if condition false
	arr[] = {5,0,5000,10000,17,13, ... , 3,21000,10}
	        {T,T,F,     F,   T, T, ... , T, F,    T}

It is very difficult to predict that if statement will be false or true, hence branch prediction don’t play any significant role here.
Branch prediction works on the pattern the algorithm is following or basically the history, how it got executed in previous steps. If the guess is correct, then CPU continue executing and if it goes wrong, then CPU need to flush the pipeline and roll back to the branch and restart from beginning.
In case compiler is not able to utilise branch prediction as a tool for improving performance, programmer can implement his own hacks to improve performance.
References :
Branch_prediction
StackOverflow
Pipelining in computing
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