The sorting algorithm led to improvements that were up to 70% faster than benchmarks for shorter sequences and about 1.7% faster for sequences exceeding 250,000 elements.

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.

Sorting is so basic that algorithms are built into most standard libraries for programming languages. And, in the case of the C++ library used with the LLVM compiler, the code hasn't been touched ...