Sounds more complicated than what it’s worth tbh
Gork@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I’ve got an unconventional application idea for this particle accelerator on a chip.
True random number generation. There’s loads of random information that can be measured from such a device in a controlled manner.
If you could fit one of these on a motherboard then you wouldn’t even need to call a pseudo random number generator algorithm anymore, you can pull data directly from the chip.
Cicraft@lemmy.world 1 year ago
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
You underestimate what a truly random number generator would be worth then.
luckystarr@feddit.de 1 year ago
There are easier ways to get the same level of randomness.
salton@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Like a webcam aimed at a wall of lava lamps.
pensa@kbin.social 1 year ago
Much easier ways. For example lava lamps
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
The same level as locally truly random? What provides that same level of random?
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
You can already make/buy a Quantum RNG for truly random numbers.
e0qdk@kbin.social 1 year ago
There's already hardware RNGs on computer chips -- e.g. the RDRAND instruction on most x86 chips from the last decade or so uses a hardware entropy source as part of its behavior. The quality, of course, is one of those things people go "Uh, can I really trust this...?" about though.
Additionally, PRNGs still have uses even if you do trust hardware RNGs; determinism is a very useful property in software -- it is way, way easier to debug something deterministic (by running a PRNG with a specific seed over and over while testing) even if you want the final version to be randomized unpredictably for users. They also tend to be faster.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
I’ve heard that you could pull random numbers from a basic thermometer. Is a hardware RNG just based on measuring the random noise of some measurement like that?
e0qdk@kbin.social 1 year ago
This documentation from Intel says of the entropy source that "The ES runs asynchronously on a self-timed circuit and uses thermal noise within the silicon to output a random stream of bits at the rate of 3 GHz." By thermal noise, I believe they mean this sort of noise but this is not my subject of expertise (I'm a programmer, not an EE or physicist). Not sure what AMD uses, but probably something similar, I'd expect.