Random numbers

[John (EBo) David]

Michael Wittman wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Mar 29, 2002 at 03:18:23AM -0700, der.hans wrote:
> > Am 28. Mar, 2002 schwätzte John (EBo) David so:
> >
> > > there was a scientific amirican artical about 10 years ago on building a
> > > chaos white noise random generator usinging a diode operated in it's
> > > unstable region and sampled...  They got the thing to sit there and
> > > wonder all over the place.  Appearently the dude that made it was able
> > > to get the built for just a couple of dollars at radio shack.  You would
> > > likely be able to build it with an old junk radio or TV ;-)
> >
> > So why don't we have these for computers? Do they interfere with other
> > stuff? Does the rest of the computer interfere with them? Are they too slow
> > or not really random with today's computing capabilities and speeds?
> 
> Intel is integrating these (or something similar) into some of their
> chipsets:
> 
>      http://developer.intel.com/design/security/rng/rng.htm
> 
> There's a Linux driver too:
>       http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0001.3/att-0037/01-rng.c

maybe we should get ahold of the old SA article and make a
PLUG/sourceforge project for building one of these random number
generators that can be hooked up to a serial/USB/etc. port and generate
random numbers...

The problem that I really forsee is that if people were interested in
doing something like this we would have to write some tools to test the
generated datasets for periodicity, phase patterns, etc. to make sure
that it is really random and is not inhearently flawed...

are there any serious mathameticians that could either write or
coordinate such a project?


  EBo --