For the given assembly from the blog post

    loop:
        lea (%rdx,%rax,4),%rcx
        cmp (%rcx),%esi
        cmovg %rcx,%rdx
        shr %rax
        jne loop

Here's a simulated CPU trace on Intel skylake: https://uica.uops.info/tmp/2de9d862d05d482ebed576d7e3923b93_...

Note that this tracer makes the assumption that all memory loads are in cache (otherwise the memory lookup will dominate). So bear that in mind for this code, especially since memory reads will likely dominate the cost of a binary search.

Regardless, it appears that the cost of conditional move is not the source of bottleneck.