Figure 4: Sorting a file of 25,000 random words (128,205 bytes). Sort times in seconds

                   ------ Number work files ------
Buffer Size          3     4     5     6     7     8
-----------       ----------------------------------
       1000       34.4  22.7  21.6  21.9  22.5  22.7
       5000       19.7  16.4  15.5  15.7  16.2  16.4
      10000       16.6  14.5  13.4  13.3  13.7  14.1
      50000       10.5   9.5   9.0   9.2   --    --
      65500       10.7   9.6   9.2   --    --    --