Branch Prediction

original post

The question is 

Why is processing a sorted array faster than an unsorted array?

I got this question from mitbbs, it's a interview question.

在下面这个程序中，如果sort后的totalTime 总是比不sort的totalTime 小，
你可否解释是啥原因？

public class Work {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
    
        int a[] = new int[1000000000];
        
        //fill a
        
        //sort a 
        //do not sort a
        
        starttime=System.currentTimeMillis() 
        for (int i=0;i<a.length;i++) {
            process(a[i]);
        }
        endtime=System.currentTimeMillis() 
        
        totalTime = endtime-starttime;
    }
     
    process(int element) {

     if (element > 256) 
         System.out.println(element);
     else
         System.out.println(element);
     
    }
}