When should we use Radix sort?

Question

It seems Radix sort has a very good average case performance, i.e. O(kN): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_sort

Yet it seems like most people are still using

Answer 1

when n > 128, we should use RadixSort

when sort int32s, I choose radix 256, so k = log(256, 2^32) = 4, which is significant smaller than log(2, n)

and in my test, radix sort is 7 times faster than quicksort in the best case.

public class RadixSort {
    private static final int radix=256, shifts[]={8,16,24}, mask=radix-1;
    private final int bar[]=new int[radix];
    private int s[] = new int[65536];//不使用额外的数组t，提高cpu的cache命中率

    public void ensureSort(int len){
        if(s.length < len)
            s = new int[len];
    }   

    public void sort(int[] a){
        int n=a.length;
        ensureSort(n);
        for(int i=0;i>8)&mask]++;
        for(int i=1;i=0;i--)a[--bar[(s[i]>>8)&mask]]=s[i];//同一个桶内的元素，低位已排序，而放入t中时是从t的大下标向小下标放入的，所以应该逆序遍历s[i]来保证原有的顺序不变

        for(int i=0;i>16)&mask]++;
        for(int i=1;i=0;i--)s[--bar[(a[i]>>16)&mask]]=a[i];//同一个桶内的元素，低位已排序，而放入t中时是从t的大下标向小下标放入的，所以应该逆序遍历s[i]来保证原有的顺序不变

        for(int i=0;i>24)&mask]++;
        for(int i=129;i=0;i--)a[--bar[(s[i]>>24)&mask]]=s[i];//同一个桶内的元素，低位已排序，而放入t中时是从t的大下标向小下标放入的，所以应该逆序遍历s[i]来保证原有的顺序不变      
    }
}