lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1996]   [May]   [24]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
From
SubjectRe: CONFIG_RANDOM option for 1.99.2
Date
>And finally random.c is not as random as You may beleve. Start it on an 
>otherwise not busy machine to see why! Yust do cat /dev/random and see
>the random numbers coming precisely after any keybord hit. This isn't
>acceptable for any number cruching,

Of course you don't use /dev/random for number crunching. If you
want a really strong random number generator, you'd use /dev/urandom.

OTOH, for Monte Carlo simulation etc., you don't want really random
numbers. Your best bet would be a good (and I emphasize GOOD) random
number genetator (you can base it on MD5, for example), which you feed
with different seed values. Keeping the seed values around is
a good idea in case you want reproducible results (like running
the same program with different optimization settings to see if anything
breaks).

>In fact it was a Montecarlo integration, which made me sceptical
>about /dev/random or /dev/urandom.

The algorithms in /dev/urandom are believed to be very strong. If you
can point out any weaknesses they have in Monte Carlo integration,
please post your results to sci.crypt.research. You'll cause a minor
revolution there.


\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:37    [W:0.057 / U:0.360 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site