Does the number of nodes affect performance?

Question

HTML

There is such a layout from a list with 1000 link elements

<ul>
  <li><a>Link</a></li>
  <li><a>Link</a></li>
  <li><a>Link</a></li>
  ... 996 more
  <li><a>Link</a></li>
</ul>

Wouldn't the browser take longer to parse such HTML than one where div is used instead of ul and the a tag is directly inserted into it? If so, then there is no point in using semantic layout in this case?