Sorting linked lists

Methods for sorting linked lists :
* Merge sort ( see Knuth Vol.3 p.164 : Alogrithm L )
* Radix sort ( see Knuth Vol.3 p.175 )

He also poses the question "What is the best list-sorting method for six-digit keys, for use on the MIX computer?"(p.309) at the end of the Chapter on sorting and gives the following answer:
For small N : list insertion, for medium N (say 64) : list merge; for large N, radix list sort. (p.701)

Knuth makes an interesting observation:

An ever-increasing number of "pipeline" or "number-crunching" computers have appeared in recent years. These machines have multiple arithmetic units and look-ahead circuitry so that memory references and computation can be highly overlapped; but their efficiency deteriorates noticeably in the presence of conditional branch instructions unless the branch almost always goes the same way. The inner loop of a radix sort is well adapted to such machines, because it is a straight iterative calculation of typical number-crunching form. Therefore radix sorting is usually more efficient than any other known method for internal sorting on such machines, provided that N is not too small and the keys are not too long. (p.175 Vol.3)