Vol. III of The Art of Computer Programming, chapter 5 (Sorting, intro) mentions:
Computer manufacturers of the 1960s estimated that more than 25 percent of the running time on their computers was spent on sorting, when all their customers were taken into account. In fact, there were many installations in which the task of sorting was responsible for more than half of the computing time.
I am looking for stats on current day use of comparison-based algorithms (so not only sorting and searching). Does anyone know of reports that might reflect what percentage of computation currently is estimated to involve comparison-based computation (percentage in running time or percentage of code development)? It could be company specific or regard research articles that looked into this issue.
I found one link discussing the topic.
