I believe your understanding of the literature is correct (I too am an amateur when it comes to side channel attacks). My memory is vague here but I believe tha

I believe your understanding of the literature is correct (I too am an amateur when it comes to side channel attacks). My memory is vague here but I believe that while it still lets you exploit side channels, it still requires extra time to do so which lowers the throughput you get out of the gadget.