Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:30:21 -0700 From: underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Subject: cvs commit: src/sys/modules/random Makefile src/sys/dev/random harvest.c hash.c hash.h nehemiah.c nehemiah.h probe.c randomdev.c randomdev.h randomdev_soft.c randomdev_soft.h yar Message-ID: <lvbrlvmgua.rlv@mail.comcast.net>
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(I'm sorry if I didn't manange to get this into the appropriate thread; I'm not subscribed.) Does a good PRNG (and Yarrow) attempt to generate numbers that look truly random (albeit with a very long repeat) or does it try to generate numbers that are better (and thus different) than truly random numbers, in some ways that make sense for common uses? For instance, do good PRNGs give testably-fewer long sequences of zeroes or ones than you'd get from a truly RNG? (Some users hope so.) If there's supposed to be a difference, then would it be useful to offer a best attempt at truly RNs? I don't know who needs them, though, and I have no idea what post processing of the VIA HW RNG would be needed for that, if any. Maybe none. Also in that case, common users should definitely have some post- processing to remove the long strings of zeros, etc., to make the HW RNG look more like a good PRNG. (I wonder if VIA RNG's "string filter" has something to do with avoiding long strings of zeros or ones, but I don't care enough to look, since it probably wouldn't be the best way to handle the problem (?) in FreeBSD.)
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