AlphaDev was able to shave an instruction off of sort-3, sort-5, and sort-8, and even more off of sort-6 and sort-7. There was only one (sort-4) where it didn't find a way to improve the human code.

The existing C++ algorithm for sorting a list of five items took around 6.91 nanoseconds on a typical Intel Skylake chip. AlphaDev’s took 2.01 nanoseconds, around 70% faster. Related Story ...