Noticed this while working on a related bug (JDK-8359960):

First, I see the benchmark executes a single shot per fork. As such, I believe the benchmark really tests the cost of initial GC, that probably drags a lot of (potentially non-benchmark-related) objects through new (possibly awkwardly wired, despite +AlwaysPreTouch) memory. The first iteration is 80 ms/op for me here, and the second one is -- whoosh -- only 3 ms/op! Second, and I think that is related, the benchmark is really, really noisy.