Assess performance under fixed hardware timing

Determine whether the learned Shellsort gap sequence retains its empirical advantage over the tested classical gap sequences when evaluated using a fixed hardware timing benchmark rather than comparison and move counts.

Background

The empirical evaluation measures exact comparisons and array writes, using equal-task geometric means over 25 large tasks. It does not measure wall-clock execution time, and the conclusion explicitly distinguishes the reported operation-count claim from hardware timing.

The unresolved question is whether the sequence's operation-count advantage translates into a real-time advantage under a controlled, fixed hardware and implementation environment. Such an evaluation would test the practical robustness of the learned prefix beyond the abstract cost metrics used in the paper.